In solemn procession they led him back down the halls to the deep meeting room, this time for him to be announced to men in other robes, – a smaller assembly made up of the entire faculty of the mystery schools. As he stood there trembling between his escorts at the head of the room, the Priest humbly pronounced,“Behold ‘The Little Majus!,’” Hamar’s fresh star tattoo earning him bows. It was unreal. But it, too, was happening to him. With the last of his own bravery Hamar held perfectly still and stared over their heads.
They all bowed in right order, saying their names to him. When the presentation ceremony was over, the Priest, the elders, and all of the teachers, bowed low and filed in right order out of the meeting hall, leaving him standing alone with one of the Adepts who’d been assigned to take him on an initial tour of his future domain. The Adept never smiled
First, his guide named each of the god-images on the walls of the meeting room, – not that Hamar could remember them – and explained that the hall was a special convocation arena.
“None of this is ever seen or heard by other than mystes, as you now are. You understand boy? You are now mystic, – of secrets, mystery things unseen and unknown to ordinary men.” For Hamar, keeping up with all the information was like running after a trotting horse, his normality having entirely returned overnight to that of Musar boyhood, but he didn’t dare let it show.
How could they think he had a mind for all this? What were the red jewel and chantings supposed to have done in him? In bewilderment he dumbly followed the man out of the room.
Down the hallways the man talked in a monotone as he sailed along pointing out doorways, warning Hamar to give a wide berth to those hexes on the walls, “power-knots. Novices paint them. You’ll get used to dodging spells,” and he named groups of men as they passed by. “Those two are merely local spell-casters, soothsayers. Those others… ” indicating bald men in orange robes, “are learned shastri who run their own schools back where they come from, seeking their own versions of the highest Light.”
He said there were diviners who steered kings from behind the thrones, wizards who did solstice ceremonies to call down entities and forces, astrologers who charted destinies, fortune-tellers who spoke with other voices, virgin oracles, witch doctors, yogis, necromancers, enchanter poets, seducer-sirens, sorcerers, warlocks, high Egyptian embalmers, alchemists, shamans; – more kinds of mystics, it seemed to Hamar, than there were sellers of different goods in Al Musar!
He was told that high over all was their Master Majician. Amazingly, wherever this man was, he had an even higher position in the place than the Red Priest!
“Our present Master is the last in a long line of Masters. He alone knows all their arts, and more, – can take the best of majicians even beyond those.”
The man sniffed, “Every nation is proud of their own line of majic powers, but our Master knows greater, set down by that line of beings from the dawn of time which he and all his tribe come from.”
Hamar thought, ‘And they were expecting him to know all of that knowledge?’ – he barely knew how to read! He didn’t know what to say, so he commented as seriously as he could, “So this is a mystery school?” – having once been enthralled by an old Greek traveller telling tales of one to all the street children.
“Hah! Much more! Though all are here, – the cults of Attis, Mithras, the Orphic mysteries, the societies of Sabazius, Hermes. Even more ancient than the Eleusian, or that of Isis, beyond the Rajah yoga schools or the Alexandrian scholars.
This is the place of our archives and of spiritual royalty beyond any mere mystery schools!” he sniffed again. “Our powers are beyond all known powers. The Master rules over all.” The adept gravely regarded Hamar.
“Chief of all his understandings are the high secrets for handling Death. Your role will be as the greatest Master of those.”
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