But with rumours and signs pouring out of the underworld, this notion was beginning to crack.

  That night as they poured down the mountainside, as they poured towards the tower that they had never seen and did not know existed, they were changing the world as they knew it.

  8

  Ruslana led the multitudes the same way she had climbed the mountain in the dark; she seemed to follow a road that only she could see. Someone had given her a lamp and it shone like a six-pointed star. Behind her, the multitudes, like a silent army, streamed down the mountainside. Their only weapons were their little lamps. They were a slowly flowing river, heavy with all its silted weight.

  Karnak stayed close by the side of Ruslana and the strange lamp. He marvelled at how she had changed in such a short time. She had become a force of destiny, leading the swelling multitudes down the hill and into the quiet streets of the city. As they flowed down the streets, sleepers and howlers in their houses woke up, overcame their bewilderment and joined them. Houses woke and emptied as the multitudes with their lights flowed past.

  In what seemed like no time the clamorous river of people occupied the streets. Their lights had multiplied and they brought some of the day into the night.

  A banner had appeared in Ruslana’s hand. It had one word on it in red capital letters, one word that had long perplexed the sleeping populace:

  UPRISE!

  Like a dark flood, the multitudes filled the streets. With its infinite points of light, a constellation visible in the city, they swarmed towards the famous square. The bookshop girl led them through the maze of the streets. They went round and round the city, took many turns, came up against dead ends, and turned back on themselves. They pressed on with undiminished spirit. The night had turned the city into a labyrinth.

  Ruslana walked as if in a trance, with a strange smile on her face. Suddenly she stopped at a vast empty field. Slowly, in silence, the crowds surged towards her and stopped. They stared silently into the darkness of the field.

  Then as they stared they saw that the field was not a field but a chasm, an abyss. As they went on staring they saw that it was not a chasm or an abyss. Under their concentrated gaze, it resolved itself into something no one had seen before. It had only been heard about in rumours sprung from the underground.

  They saw before them the great dark tower forgotten in legend. It was thirteen storeys high and built on a massive base of rock. In silence and fear they gazed upon the dark tower. They saw that it had three windows, in the form of downward pointing triangles. They also saw that at the summit of the tower was a giant bronze crown.

  With their little lights held aloft, the people crowded round the tower. Incomprehension flowed around them like the wind.

  9

  The authorities unleashed the fierce police on the crowd and the silence was broken. There was pandemonium everywhere as the jackal-headed police devoured the people; they shot them, clubbed them, and ate them. The police ripped off the arms and legs of the people, chewed off their heads, and ate their way through the multitudes.

  Intoxicated by their rage for order, they ate their way through the crowds. They ate the lanterns and the little lights too.

  They must have devoured hundreds of people and as many lamps when something peculiar happened. No one knows how it happened and it has never been explained. A collective sigh rose from the multitudes. Then a silence settled on everyone. For an eternal moment in the pandemonium there was a strange glacial silence. For a moment a curious stillness reigned. It may have been because of the sound of a sublime trumpet.

  There was something soul-piercing about it. No one had ever heard such a tone before. It was beyond all the registers of sound. It played above their heads as though an angel of the apocalypse were blasting forth the celestial trumpet for the waking of the dead from their graves.

  The sound was brief and piercing and women threw their hands up in exultation and men crossed their arms in front of their chests in a hieratic sign of supplication. Some claimed afterwards that the sound came from the underworld. Some said that it was a rare moment of the interpenetration of a higher world with this one. Those who did not believe in such inexplicable things maintained that it was the natural conclusion of a historic progression, when the forces deep in the human spirit revolt against its oppression, and that the sound heard was the collective cry of a rebellion so momentous that it altered the powers in the world. Whatever the sound was, from whatever realm it came, whether from within the multitudes, or from elsewhere, it had shattering consequences. There are moments in history that cannot be explained by the normal modes of explanation. They are causes of wonder and border on the miraculous. They are frightening to historians. They are the territory of myth.

  When this inexplicable sound blasted over the pandemonium the fierce police with their jackal-faces stood transfixed. Their mouths were red with the blood of the living men and women they had devoured. But the immeasurable sound made them stand still, as if they had been turned to stone.

  When the sound passed, people in the crowds woke from the dream it had induced, and everyone stood around a little stunned to find themselves where they were. Many were surprised to find themselves in the streets in their pyjamas. Many were astonished to find themselves awake. But maybe the most astonished of all were the fierce police of the Hierarchy. They found that they had lost their jackal-faces. They stood among the crowd with their half-confused normal faces, with the blood and an unnatural bitter taste in their mouths.

  Almost in an instant, as if an inaudible command had been uttered, the police beat a retreat and sped away in their white vans and armoured vehicles.

  10

  Released from the enchantment of ages, the crowd clamoured round the foot of the rock. They clambered up the base of the tower, till they formed an intense gathering. Then with shouts and songs, with prayers and curses, they shook the tower. They heaved and rocked the structure.

  They must have shifted something significant for a great cry was heard from the heights of the tower. Then a bolt of lightning, which seemed to come from a momentarily visible solar disc, struck the bronze crown at the summit. Then the bronze crown, made by artisans of old, came tumbling down. It fell with a resounding crash into the abyss on the north side.

  While the crowd recovered from the shock of the falling crown, they saw people jumping from the three windows. Fires had broken out all over the tower. Fires blazed from the three windows, forming dense clouds in seven places round about the tower.

  Those who jumped from the tower were seen falling upside down, screaming as they fell. Some fell into the abyss. Those who jumped from the burning windows smashed on to the ground.

  11

  The crowds gathered to see who the Hierarchy were. They gathered to see what they were. They gathered round in curiosity. Murmurs and rumours circulated among them. They clustered round the fallen broken bodies. They were surprised to see that the bodies were broken and smashed and bleeding. With trepidation, with fear, they turned the bodies over, expecting perhaps to see something unimaginable. To their horror they saw that the bodies were the bodies of people they knew and recognised. They saw themselves. They saw that the Hierarchy members were people just like them. They saw that the Hierarchy was them and that they were the Hierarchy. They and the Hierarchy were one. They had always been one.

  12

  Confused by this revelation that they had inflicted oppression and terror on themselves for centuries, the people hung their heads in silence and shame and distress.

  The people who had smashed to the ground were little people like them. Their blood oozed out of broken skulls. Their arms and legs, all broken, were like the arms and legs of the dead and dying. They were no different from all those who had been devoured by the jackal-faces, no different from all those who howled at night as though all hope had fled the earth.

  The crowd would have collapsed beneath the weight of its own incomprehension were it not for the spirit and exhortations of Ruslana. Waving her banner, shouting the one word into the centre of their gloom, rousing their courage, the bookshop girl led them towards the mythical prison built in the dead centre of the land.

  13

  The prison was the single greatest structure in the world and it cast an enormous shadow. It was made of lead, concrete, iron, adamant, volcanic rock, stout steel, and organic substances of unusually tough material. It was the forbidding masterwork of the Hierarchy.

  It was the work of innumerable generations. It was believed to have been built at the beginning of time and it was referred to in this way in the new myths. Successive eras of evolution, technology, philosophy, and intentionality had gone into its aggregate construction. Its foundation went deep into the earth. It was like a gigantic mausoleum.

  The prison had three levels. Outwardly it was shaped like a pyramid but with five sides instead of four. Each side, made of the toughest metals, had a single window. The window was always darkened.

  It was a compact mass of darkness and force, so tall it blotted out the sky. The whole area around it was a dead zone.

  The prison was the heart of the land, its greatest symbol. It was the land. Though no one had ever seen the prison before, because of the force-field around it that had rendered it invisible, all roads and all destinies led to the prison.

  14

  The prison was the mind and heart of the land. To glimpse it was to sense things previously unknown about it. You would sense its innumerable vaulted ceilings, its black and white pillars of ancient construction, diverse materials, and noble forms. You would sense its massive staircases that led to nightmare interiors which bristled with the limitless memory of the land. You would sense its massive gates, wrought with figures of death, a large skeleton with a scythe, possessing a huge skull from which two serpents crawled out of its eye-sockets, and the crossed bones in bronze high above the gates.

  To glimpse the prison was to see that it was the home of the original labyrinth. All those who entered were lost forever in its holes, its winding spaces, its limitless cellars, its oblique torture chambers, its vast hall of mirrors, its tunnels, its passageways that led to obscure depths. Its dungeons were magnificent and housed many wondrous and fearful things.

  It was a house of noise and silence. It had monstrous rooms of seven walls. It had vaults of the forgotten dead. It was the centre of the land.

  15

  When the people dreamt it was to the prison that they went. The prison was the temple of the land. The Hierarchy had made it the centre of the land’s new religion. From the prison were conducted all the rigorous obscure rites. Here priests were ordained. From here the economy was run. The prison was the true centre of government.

  There was a numinous relationship between the Hierarchy and the prison. But the relationship between the prison and all aspects of the land was unknown, till it was glimpsed for the first time.

  16

  They had poured towards the prison, they had crowded towards it in rage. They had wanted to destroy it, to tear it down. But as they gazed upon its monumental structure they were struck dumb. It was the wonder of the ages, the single greatest achievement of the race.

  They found themselves gazing at that which had been built by their desires, their fears, their hopes, their blood, their dreams. Their ancestors had built it brick by brick, stone upon stone, metal upon metal, not knowing what it was they were building. They had built it and consecrated it with their daily lives. They thought they were building the noblest work known to man and woman, for the glorification of the ages.

  Many millions had perished in its construction. The sea, the earth, the air, and the remote stars had collaborated in the erection of this monstrous structure that stood like a mountain on the flat earth.

  While they gazed upon it the multitudes realised they were gazing upon something else, something that made them silent. They gazed almost without breathing. Each person became aware that they carried around within them the prison they gazed upon. Each person was aware of being in prison themselves. Each person sensed now the forgotten passages from the original myth, which said that, after the fall, in the beginning was the prison.

  17

  Hanging upside down, in the depths of the prison, in its deepest dungeon, the boy-warrior remembered his grandfather reading to him from the book of the original myth. He remembered what the old man had said before he died.

  ‘One day, my boy, you must take a leap into the unknown and discover what has been hidden from us. Don’t be like the rest of us. Follow your best nature. Follow your deepest questions. The world is the wrong way up. Up is down and down is up. Things are not what they seem. Follow the trails left in the original myths. Everything we need to know is concealed in what we take for granted. There are many prisons within prisons. There are many prisons outside prisons too. But there is a boundless horizon. It is not out there. It is not above or below. It is not out there in space or at the bottom of the sea. It is the only freedom there is from all the prisons. No one has found it for a thousand years. Find it and bring the discovery back to your people that they may each start on the journey to the ultimate freedom.’

  18

  The boy hanging upside down knew that no one had ever escaped the prison. He knew from fragments of the original myth that no one had ever escaped the prison because the prison was not a building. It was not a structure or a form. No one had ever escaped the prison because the prison was the world. It was the world of the living and the dead. These were things he had glimpsed from the original myths.

  It was maybe at that moment that the boy-warrior had the great revelation that had been growing in him all the days of his life. For he suddenly saw a roseate fire all around him. He saw the roseate fire and he beheld a great light shining through the prison. It shone through the walls and bars, through its lead and its stone. It shone through its crypts and torture chambers and labyrinths as though all that stone and iron were as insubstantial as air.

  19

  The silent multitudes saw a strange light shining in the prison and they were afraid. In the depths of the night the prison seemed transfigured. For a fugitive moment it seemed to be covered in splendour. It was radiant with a golden glow, as if the prison itself housed the rising sun.

  A deep collective howl was heard. It came from all over the land, from the earth itself. Like a flight of demons, the howls escaped into the air, into what was left of the night. Then the howls faded into the corners of the sky.

  It is recorded that the waters tasted sweet that night. Changes were noted in the depths of rivers.

  20

  With the first star of dawn, an amazing thing came to pass. With no turning of the keys in the locks, the gates of the prison opened and the doors were unbolted. The boy, no longer the boy-warrior, was seen coming out of the prison. He looked tiny beneath those gigantic gates. The massive skeleton with the scythe suddenly looked harmless.

  They had expected a hero, but they saw a child. They saw a child who had once been read to by an old man. A child who had been read to from the original myth.

  He came out of the prison with a playful smile on his face. He smiled as though the world was a child’s game played in eternity.

  As the multitudes beheld him they sensed the wheels of fortune change. The child seemed to them the very image of the world as it should be.

  ☆

  Once she took him to the top of a high hill in the centre of the city. It was early in the afternoon, on a weekend, and the view of the city was clear and fine. They sat on a bench and looked out over the splendid view of the city in silence. Then she began to sing. She sang quietly to herself. Then she stopped. Karnak looked at her when she stopped. He saw that she was weeping.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Then why are you weeping?’

  ‘No reason really.’

  ‘There must be. What is it?’

  Amalantis didn’t say anything for a while.

  ‘This world could be so beautiful,’ she said.

  Not long after that they came for her.

  21

  Out of the prison, behind the boy, came a great procession of those who had disappeared into the endless dark. Like the creatures saved on a fabled ark, they poured forth from the immense prison. They poured out onto the tempered earth. They came out of the prison like ghosts. There were so many. No one knew that so many had been lost in the dark. They poured out like shadows and when they came out into the air they acquired substance again. They were coming out of the night and into the dawn.

  Among them were the artists and the writers and the scientists and inventors and the politicians who had told awkward truths. Among them were children and lost mothers and Ruslana’s father and other fathers.

  There was among them a woman who seemed to be dancing, holding a magic wand in each hand. And there was one who carried what looked like a celestial wheel.

  Not inconspicuously among them was also the hierophant and his two acolytes. Each of the acolytes bore a book containing fragments of the original myth. The books brought back into the world the mystery of the lost word.

  22

  Karnak studied each face in the procession. He looked at each face with a shaking heart. He saw how each new face was greeted with cries of intemperate joy from someone in the crowd. He saw Ruslana weep with jubilation at being reunited with her father. He came out of the prison and paused beneath its gate with a tranquil expression on his face. He was gaunt but lit with a magical light.

 

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