PROLOGUE

The gnostors of Hypostatics will tell you that space-time is isotropic, that there is no center: all locations are equally central and equally peripheral.

Perhaps.

But every Haji knows different. Those who survive that pilgrimage know there is a place different from all other places, a Center to the sentient universe.

Its name is Desrien.

From orbit, Desrien at first appears no different from any other planet cherished by humankind: a blue-white sphere marbled by cloud-whirls, a sight resonant with memories of the Exile and our lost Mother. But there are no Highdwellings. Aside from the Node, here uninhabited, the only stars in the night sky of Desrien are those placed there by the unimaginable Hand of Telos. The planet lies open to space, unprotected by the webs of forces and vessels so familiar to interstellar travelers.

It does not need them. Those who are uninvited do not land, or if they do, they do not leave again. Unmappable, unnavigable, alone among all worlds Desrien stands exempt from the Jaspran Unalterable of Free Passage. For there is found an interface between the transcendent and the mundane that flouts the metrics of our sciences and defies the power of our machines, where Totality is unknowable except through human senses and perceptions.

Desrien is the heart of an immense engine, powered by the sleeting archetypal energies of the Nous, the emanations of the trillion-fold mentalities in the Thousand Suns that are focused there by the mystical lens of the Mandala. There, stretched tight by the weight of dreams, the skin of the world is eminently fragile. The featherweight blow of a single thought can open a wound through which myths both fearful and beloved erupt into the waking world, so that the pilgrim enters fully conscious into the Dreamtime of humanity and walks among archetypes awakened into the light of day.

Every visitor to Desrien who truly surrenders to its mysteries thus confronts enfleshed the myths by which they live—which may not be the ones they thought they knew.

The title Haji, then, is an honored one; but those who bear it rarely speak of what they saw and lived on Desrien. It is enough that their lives are wholly changed.

Gn. Yan byn-Ibrahim Japhez
College of Archetype and Ritual
Desrien, The Hinge of Time
Sync Achilenga, 615 a.a.

In the place of the Omnipotence there is neither before nor after; there is only act.

Charles Williams
Descent into Hell
Lost Earth, ca. 300 b.e.

There was nothing, in no time, neither perception nor non-perception. Neither movement nor non-movement, neither identity nor difference, neither eternity nor boundedness.

Then an impalpable blow, disturbing nothing. Nothing dwindled and resolved, rising through depths of abnegation to the awareness of a flame, suspended in a darkness evocative of incense and the faint tang of fresh fruit. Beyond the flame a golden blur, sharpening to a vast face of inhuman calm indwelling with transhuman compassion, its lips curved in a smile terrible with possibilities, knowing everything, rejecting nothing.

The bodhisattva Eloatri gazed up at the Buddha. The gentle scent of green tea from the kitchen beyond the dharma room tickled her nose. She let the sensation go, not thinking about it, merely experiencing it.

There was no sound. Above, the narrow windows against the roof admitted the pale light of false dawn, barely illuminating the riotous profusion of images that framed the gilded statue of the Awakened One. The vihara was asleep around her; alone among the sleeping monks and nuns, their abbot meditated.

Had been meditating. There was no one in the room; no reason for whatever had breached her repose in the higher dhyanas. Eloatri closed her eyes.

There was nothing, in no time, neither perception nor non-perception. . .

There was a blow, impalpable, and nothing fled before a flare of light resolving into the nine-faced form of Vajrabhairava, the terrifying aspect of the bodhisattva Manjushri, who is the strength of the spirit of the Buddha. Locked in sexual union with his consort, trampling beasts and men underfoot, his thirty-four arms juggling the flaming sword of knowledge, his twenty-seven-fold gaze sought her out and pinned her against the darkness as the sword was transformed into a silver sphere that he hurled at her head.

Eloatri shouted and opened her eyes to the calm of the dharma room.

The echo of her shout died away, replaced by the soft slap of bare feet in the corridor behind her. She ignored the presence behind her, breathing for a time until her heart slowed, gazing into the compassionate eyes of the Buddha. Meaning would come when it would come. Rising to her feet in a fluid motion that belied her eighty years, she clapped her hands before her and bowed deeply to the Buddha. It was time.

She met the calm eyes of the monk Nukuafoa; then his eyes widened as she removed the blue cord knotted around her waist, and put it into his hands.

“The Hand of Telos is upon me,” she said. “And my third hejir is before me. You are chosen.”

He bowed. She sensed the pressure of responsibility settling around him, and she felt his unspoken question as she walked to her cell, where she collected her staff and cloak, begging bowl and sandals.

Then she left the vihara that had been her refuge for twenty-one years, driven out upon the third pilgrimage of her life, devotee and victim of that Unconditioned which humankind calls Telos, on a planet called Desrien.