Jesus Christ, Shaman King
1
The desert winds swept the dunes. Here and there patches of grass grew, or trees; but the winds were the same winds as in the barest stretches of desert, and showed no mercy for the brave emissaries of life. Three men trekked across the hills and fields and rock and sand, towards a ring of low hills on which burned one or two telltale lights and torches; but the lights they followed were not the humble candles lit by shepherds on the hilltops to keep light. Their eyes were fixed on the peak of the dome of sky, where the light of a bright star was growing steadily brighter.
The men were shamans. Indeed, they were shamans of the highest repute; they rose above the priests of the established religions of their homelands in power and knowledge, advised kings. Their knowledge came from the stars. The stars were their guides, and they knew the path and portent of every planet and aster well. The five-pointed star, the pentagram, was their symbol, worn on their turbans and carried on banners by their servants; and they knew the meaning of the symbol well.
One was young, one was middle-aged and the one who led the caravan was ancient, wizened as a rock face. He sat silent as one as well, so still one could think he was sitting dead on his patient camel's back. But a light glowed in his eyes as he gazed at the star in the distance that was more than the star's reflected light; a light that was alive, alive with a dream still burning as bright as if he were young.
Balthazar looked up towards the other two. "Not far beyond those hills lies the town we seek." He turned his head downward and spoke to the silent camel. "Soon you may rest." The camel snorted.
"At last!" shouted Gaspar. "I feared we would not make it in time for the Holy Night of Horus, but we are finally approaching."
"I can see the star brighter in the sky, as if it were closer, as if it were so close that distances as small in the grand picture as those we covered could make a difference."
"Or does it just glow brighter for the Holy Night now that it draws nigh?" suggested Gaspar. But Melchior did not answer. He looked up at the star silently, staring at it with a relaxed intentness as the camels watched forever in front of them, their eyes drawn as by a trailing string to their as-yet-unseen destination. He seemed asleep, dreaming good dreams, with his eyes open and shining with flickering gold-and-blue starlight. The star they pursued flickered so as it seemed to actually have five points like the star upon their banner; as if the ancient symbol all shamans had known for centuries had been based on a viewer's drawing of this star they were just seeing today; though sometimes the five points seemed to become six, like another sacred star the shamans knew well, the symbol of the union of male and female triangles, the star of David or Solomon. He watched this star, breathing deeply, as if in meditation. He whispered; "On the holy night of birth, when I reach this holy star's light, and see the birth it heralds, I can finally rest."
Whether or not the others heard it out loud, the other two shamans all knew what he was thinking.
The man at the watchtower on Herod's outpost did not notice the star. He was not an open-minded sort, and not inclined to notice much of anything due to his inclination to think he had seen it all before. Travellers, he certainly noticed them; he was, without mistake, a great watchman; but he only noticed things when it was his job to notice them. When he could be bothered to, he was a genius of noticing things. He could spot a camel's footprints by the time most people could barely spot the camel. But he did not do it as a matter of course; only for his weekly pay. It was a job he did not enjoy, he only did it for the money, because it bored him; but so did everything, so much he had noticed and the more he noticed the more convinced he was that by now there was nothing new under the sun or the midwinter moon.
It also didn't help that the star was somewhat behind and above him, and his job was to look forwards, not backwards into the courtyard he was guarding. Looking forwards, the only stars he noticed that were out of the ordinary were an array of five-pointed stars on flags, far in the distance. They hung low over a caravan of men and camels on whose backs sat men hidden under fine Persian canopies. A rich caravan; susceptible to be looted for most of their gold by the toll-taker, he thought. Nothing new; except the star flag, which he had never seen before.
He called down to the guardsmen and the toll-takers: "Keep on your guard, men, a rich caravan approaches from out of the desert. They travel as if they wish to pass us, but they will not pass us."
The small fortress stood over a little town ringed by hills, the town of Bethlehem. It was a small place, something of a commercial hub for the rural shepherds for miles around, that had attracted enough money and attention to have grown its own upper-class district out of a few Roman ambassadors and provincial supervisors and the wealthier set of lucky wool-merchants. The town was remarkable particularly as a place of beginnings. Thousands were born in the little town of Bethlehem, and most moved away. However, that fact made it one of the most crowded cities in Israel now, for the Romans had decided they had nothing better to do than to take a census, forcing rich and poor to move back to the town they were born in – in the case of many, Bethlehem.
The rich men approaching, however, did not seem the type to have been born in Bethlehem. Rich and poor, Roman and Jew, were all born in the town, but these men were neither Romans or Jews, he saw as they came closer; they were foreign; Arabian? Persian? Indian? African? All of those? He could not tell; and the star banners were bizarre and somewhat unsettling. He had not heard of any nation ever flying such a flag. They were making as if to pass the watch-fort by entirely. They did not even seem to notice it. Their path was fixed in an unnaturally straight line. They did not join the road where the desert ended, but continued over the fields as if drawn by a magnetic force. What was drawing them so? What was the single object of their focus? His eyes followed the line they took across the frosty night-meadows, worn ragged from sheep-grazing, and it led past the hills into Bethlehem; but even looking behind him into the brightly lit town he did not notice the star.
The star was not an entirely normal star. It was not even intended to be noticed by everyone, after all. Only those whose minds were open could realize it was there, because it was not a physical object in the sky.
And he didn't particularly care about what was in the sky over Bethlehem. He had seen Bethlehem and the sky over it a thousand times before. It was not that he was interested in. He thought, all of a sudden, that the men might be smugglers. Organized criminals often had eccentric signs like the star, links to faraway countries and great riches if they were successful. They certainly weren't coming for the census.
He shouted down to the guards: "There's a caravan in the distance, going off-road! They're trying to get past us and go straight into Bethlehem! I'm going to sound the horn! Go fetch men in case they stay their course!" Whenever someone was off-road they sounded the horn to let them know that they had to pass the fort. These men would be no exception to the rule – he had seen this happen often enough – unless they ignored the horn. Doing so was breaking the law of the Romans. No-one but the exceptionally desperate and particularly fearless – or reckless – smugglers and convicts did this. In that case soldiers would be sent out to meet them – with swords drawn.
The watchman reached for the horn that hung from the inside of his watchtower. It was a richly made, new horn with laurel leafs around the rim – a pompous design more fit for a king's parade than for signaling travelers to a toll-booth, and not original either. He didn't like it – but it had powerful sound, and that counted. It was new and made by a craftsman from Rome and would not have to be replaced for a long time. He raised it and breathed in deeply – not inexpertly sucking air into his cheeks but filling his chest and lungs to the brim, so that his cheeks barely seemed to inflate. He held his breath as he put it to his lips and let it all out. The sound was hollow and dry, but strong and carried far, crossing the fields, rocks and desert like a racing wind.
Melchior, the old man, was resting on his camel's back in a position of meditation from the far east, eyes closed. The light of the star danced on the curtain of his eyelids, flickering through the perfect darkness. By this focus he made out direction from in the lead, even with his eyes closed in meditation – even better and straighter than with his eyes open. He blocked out every sense except his instincts and the patterns of flickering starlight. But he could not hear the horn, and kept going despite it. His intuition felt the Earth around him and was at one with all life nearby, even the smallest bug, but ignored the alien, purposeless presences of the road and the fort.
Gaspar's and Balthazar's eyes and ears were open. Gaspar, the youngest of the shamans, laughed at the sound of the horn. At first they kept going; but Balthazar seemed to understand the urgence of the sound. He tapped Melchior on the shoulder, who quickly snapped out of his trance. "What is it?" the old man asked.
"A horn blew from the Roman outpost. They wish us to come by the road and pay the toll. It is the law of these parts. For us to become criminals in the Roman empire would be bad for men of our status, no matter how inefficient the road is."
"Efficient or not, I like neither roads nor Romans," grumbled Gaspar.
"Gaspar, you do not yet have the political significance to your nation that we have. But for us, however we dislike roads or Romans, we must still follow these laws if we are to retain our positions, the positions that allow shamans like us to be honoured and not persecuted as you were before. Is it not your dream to become a great onmyouji like us? You have the most potential of us all so it would be best for you to tread carefully in foreign parts. When we are in Rome, we must be orderly as Romans."
Gaspar grunted his reluctant agreement and turned his camel.
The guards on horseback had already been sent out by the time the shamans changed direction sluggishly toward the fort. They halted their horses in mid-acceleration, grinding the dirt under their hooves into a small, quiet explosion of dust on the dry and chilly air. The lead soldier turned back to the watchmen on the walls. "They've turned towards us!"
"Well, I can see, and you don't have to ask me for permission! Turn around already!" The watchman smacked his forehead with the hand that wasn't holding the horn. He had to have the strangest of people, possibly criminals, coming his way tonight. He was hoping to have some rest since the tide of newcomers to Bethlehem had mostly stopped. The census was almost at hand and the stragglers were few; no-one had passed the fort since a wretched poor couple, a carpenter and his wife, some hours ago. Who were these bizarre men who traveled like kings but seemed as if they were lost or blind, and waved unknown flags at all who passed them?
Well, he would find out soon enough. They were coming, and would certainly be interrogated fully by the guards. These travelers were no doubt suspicious. In fact, he decided that nothing would satisfy his strange, disgruntled curiosity except that if he interrogated them himself. He was Chief Watchman, and probably the most high-ranking person out tonight. He turned away from the watchtower and started to descend the wooden stairs in the back of the post. He passed a lesser watchman napping at the bottom.
"Wake up, fool!" He slapped the man twice hard across the face. The man woke bewildered, but when he looked into the face of his superior he understood. "I don't get an hour's sleep in the night when I am allowed and you feel like you can doze off any time you want when I when you aren't allowed. It's disrespectful. Look, I'm going down to question a caravan of very suspicious travelers. You take my post and don't go back down until I say so." He stormed off.
He stood with the guards at the gate and watched the caravan come fully into view. The sign on the flags was now completely clear; a five-pointed star of crossing lines. The caravan itself was a hodgepodge assortment of different cultures; the decoration of the tents that it carried and of the carpets on the camels' backs was Persian, Ethiopian, Arabian, Indian and some designs and influences he had never seen anywhere before, not in the peddlers' mock-foreign stalls or books of strange cultures of other lands, recounted by travelers who had probably drank too much wine.
They approached slowly; almost painfully slowly, like a mirage. They did not call out to him.
He grew frustrated quickly and called out himself. "Who are you?! You almost got yourselves arrested, and you're under heavy suspicion of being lawbreakers!"
The men who were drawing near the gate were silent.
He could see them now – the men themselves. There were numerous servants and attendants, all in simple, monastic clothing, light sandals from the far east that did not seem the best-designed for long desert voyages. Their simple robes had the same sign on them as on the flags, and they wore hooded brown capes of some rough, coarse cloth. The three men on camels were easy to identify as the leaders. The youngest had a shaved head and wore a saffron robe; he carried a staff and sat in a meditative position. The star symbol was painted upon his forehead in red ochre. The middle-aged one had an air of royal dignity; he was clad in loose-fitting, baggy white robes and had a tall, straight black brimless hat. His face was as still and solid as stone and his eyes were closed, like the others, though unlike them he held his head high. He too had a star painted on his forehead, in blue ochre. The leader was an ancient man with wild white hair like a lion's mane, in simple clothes with a red five-pointed star on the front. He carried two heavy scrolls on his back and two smaller scrolls in each hand. His eyes were closed, his face serene, and the star on his forehead was gold.
"Answer! You're only deepening the empire's suspicion of you! We could just arrest you here and now!"
The middle-aged one answered. "We are the onmyouji. We are sages of the east. We follow a star."
At that point they drew up to the gate and stopped. "What do you mean you follow a star? Everyone follows stars for navigation. Where are you following the stars and why?"
"Not the stars; a star. We follow it to wherever it leads us. It has great astrological significance that you cannot comprehend. We mean no harm to any. But we must see what it heralds."
"You think you're better than us because you're rich and foreign and barmy?!" The watchman was really angry now. "I have an astrologer of my own – I'm wealthy enough, I'll have you know, to be able to consult one of the best regularly. There's no great star hanging over Bethlehem. I can tell you're smugglers." The leader was getting down off his camel now. "Men, arrest these village charlatans!"
"Roman, I can see that the only charlatans must be your astrologers." He extended two fingers and touched the watchman in the centre of the forehead, where he had his star tattoo. The guards moved slowly to surround and arrest the wise men. The attendants, unarmed, took eastern combat poses; the guards closed in but did not yet move. "Now turn around and look to the sky."
The watchman turned around and stared into the sky above Bethlehem. An impossible light blasted at his senses. He thought at first that the sun had come up. But it was not the sun. The sky around it was night. But it was far brighter than the sun, a brilliant pulsating crackling orb of pale gold and blue like lightning; five points flickered from its fiery surface. This… can't be real.
The light enveloped and smothered all his senses, and it became the still, warm darkness of unconsciousness.
Slowly, the last guard hit the ground, fast asleep. Their weapons were scattered around the gate by a force that was not of this world. Over them stood the three shamans; and hovering above them, the glowing, flickering forms of their three Over Souls. Melchior remounted, and the caravan moved on.
2
Inside the fort, a man was relaxing on a long Roman chair out in the courtyard. No wind penetrated the fort, so the bare trees were still as stone. Even the grass slept. It was somewhat warmer than outside, given the torches and the absence of cold north winds; but still, it was not normal that one would spend so much time out in the courtyard in midwinter, even here in Judaea where winters were very mild. There were better things to do within walls. But the man in the chair disagreed. He thought this was the perfect time to be out, looking at the stars…
Then he felt something; the unique eerie warmth spreading, vibrating like ripples in the air of powerful mana. He felt it in every sense. The strong aura was emanating from beyond the gate. He had not felt this in a long time. But it was not so unexpected now. The time of his purpose was drawing near. He guessed he would not be the only shaman involved.
Of course other shamans would appear, he thought, looking one last time back at the brilliant star before getting off his chair and heading to the gate.
The three shamans turned from the gate. They were on the road now, so they might as well follow the road to Bethlehem. Their camels didn't like it; neither did their ghosts. The stones beneath their feet were perfectly carved, mortared together, and they were not even stones that belonged in this region; they were torn from the bones of the Earth in a quarry far away from Bethlehem and dug into the soft sand like a disease.
As the camels began to trot, unnerved by the clicking of their hooves on this strange stone, the wise men began to disengage their over souls. But then Melchior stopped them.
"Don't disengage yet. Someone's coming."
"I feel a man… and I feel a ghost," his spirit ally spoke from within the fusion of spirit and matter.
The over soul, the supreme weapon of a shaman, was created by fusing a ghost with the shaman's own mana or spiritual power, using a material object as a focus. Each mage had a long metal staff with a pointed tip and two rings; a sacred object used by priests or hermits far in the East.
At that moment a sharp whistling sliced the air like a knife; most would have covered their ears. The shamans, instead, readied their weapons. Over the walltop came three small meteors, crackling and hissing as if the air was acid, trailing thin sharp tails of acrid smoke-stench, like the brimstone of hell; breaking up into smaller meteors as they hurtled towards the humans who were obviously their targets. The attendants took their defensive positions without the slightest fear for their lives, but Balthazar stepped in front of them, motioning for them to retreat. Just as they slammed into the caravan the middle-aged onmyouji calmly whirled his staff, which glowed with a neon starlight aura that pulsed like ripples on a pond of lightning. The motion traced a brilliant ring in the air, in which for a moment the five-pointed star insignia of the caravan seemed to appear, before the centre exploded with the meteoric impact – but the explosion rapidly changed to steam, bursting in spirals hissing and coiling like a shimmering snake pierced by flying sparks. The cloud cleared, floating away on the wind, revealing an Over Soul glowing with the clear, rippling blue of water.
"A shaman. Here?!" Gaspar was shocked.
"Yes, I wouldn't imagine one at a mere Roman border fort like this, in such an insignificant district;" Balthazar nodded solemnly.
"I can't get over the fact that Romans even have shamans!"; and Gaspar sounded like it too.
"Who are you," Balthazar called out over the wall, "and why do you stop us?"
There was no answer but a sudden flapping noise like cloth in the wind. They looked up and saw on top of the guard turret, standing on the shoddily made wooden roof which should have broken under any human's weight, a dark figure in long robes of Roman design and an Egyptian cowl. Gaspar leapt into the air. "Who are you?" His Over Soul arced through the sky like a reversed comet; it was burning with a wild and roaring flame but his hand was not so much as singed.
He leapt higher than the human capacity to leap should have been, all the way up to the top of the tower; but the mysterious shaman stood his ground well. He twirled a pendant in his hand; it whistled in the night in harmony with the wind in the courtyard trees behind the wall. Gaspar's Over Soul struck, but did not strike; it did not make contact with flesh, but with a wall of fire from the spinning ghostly pendant, making an explosion like a meteor's impact where it was blocked by the other Over Soul. This explosion propelled him backwards in the air, off the tower; the attendants moved into a formation to catch him when he fell.
But they did not need to catch him. Gaspar swung his Over Soul forward; ghostly arms reached out of the flame and grabbed the edge of the guard turret, and with incomparable strength pulled him in. The shaman swung his foot forward as soon as it was in range, stepping onto the stone edge and leaning forward, rolling into the watchman's post. The mysterious shaman was now standing above him, on the 'roof'. Gaspar struck with his Over Soul; the two ghostly hands, tightened into fists, moving in concert with the fiery tip of the staff. The fists blew two holes in the wooden canopy as it exploded into flames.
The attacker leapt off as the roof exploded; the hem of his heavy, ragged robes burst into flame. He put the pendant around his neck as he rolled in the air, the flames around his feet smoking and making a ring of flame as he spun. The image of a shining golden eagle-ghost with sharp starlike eyes superimposed itself over him as suddenly, his entire body burst into flame, and his rotation and descent speeded up incredibly. He had turned himself into a living meteor. Gaspar had no time to react as the man hovered briefly in the air, spinning with ever-increasing momentum, then fell like a bomb and blew the ground apart.
The fragments of broken ground fell, clattered, settled; the rumbling ceased. The dust and the air swirled, but quickly lost the energy to conceal the outcome of the explosion.
The meteor-shaman was curled up, suspended in the air; he was held still by two huge hands, bony but wiry-muscled, three-fingered, clawed and reptilian hands with shining golden scales. The hands of a dragon. The magnificent serpent, larger than any animal that a normal human had ever seen, mane seeming to brush the moon and antlers cradling it, glowed with mana; it coiled around Melchior and deep within it one could just barely make out the hermit's staff. Balthazar's staff, crackling with electricity, was at the assailant's throat. Their enemy's clothes still smoldered.
He smirked. "If shamans this strong are coming, there must be something really great about this star."
"Who are you?"
"Who are you?"
"We're the ones in a position to be asking questions," Balthazar pointed out.
"I have great influence in Judaea. The moment you leave me here I will order troops to sack Bethlehem if you do not tell me what you are seeking there. If you take me with you, you will instantly become hunted men."
"Very well, we must both answer questions then. First, who are you?"
"I am Andronicus, one of Herod's three astrologers."
"Stronger than I expected."
"Herod found the best three in the empire. He is a king with a great appreciation of the supernatural world. He realizes its significance – even its effect on his rule."
"Are you, by any chance, the astrologer the watchman referred to?" asked Gaspar curiously.
"Yes."
"But you know about the star."
"No need to reveal shamanic secrets to the lay people. That would be to throw pearls before swine. Now, what is the star? What is its significance? It seems that you know. Neither Herod nor any of his three astrologers can uncover its secret."
"How could you not recognize it? You seem to be a powerful shaman, and if you are an astrologer that would mean you specialize in predicting the future by the stars."
"But this is no Earthly star. I have searched every book in the greatest library in Judaea for records of such an occurrence and records of what came after in history – never has such an event been seen before. Never has it been predicted. And no astrologer has deemed to write of the significance of a star that has never been seen."
"Only a Roman would be so learned in kerygma and so foolish in dogma. Are you sure it has never been seen, ever in human history?"
"Yes; I know every record of human history by heart. I am the historian-astrologer Andronicus."
"Then unriddle me this riddle, you who are so learned: what is the meaning of the name Bethlehem?"
"Simple: The House of Bread."
"What does this name represent in the lore of astrology?"
"The constellation Virgo, the virgin."
"What rises above the House of Bread on the 25th day of December – Horus Eve – every year?"
"The coinciding stars of Sirius the Dog and the belt of Orion (also called Osiris), all the brightest stars in the sky; becoming one aster that is only visible for one day in the year."
"So how can you say that it is new for a brilliant new star to rise above Beth-lehem, that is, the House of Bread?"
"You are truly wiser than I. So this is a portent of…"
"In the sky, it comes before the rising of the sun on December 25th, that is to say the virgin birth of the oak-king. December 24th among the shamans of Egypt is Horus Eve. So in the world…"
"We shall see a king, a god or a sacrifice; or all three."
"All right. That is all I need to know. King Herod shall like to come and… worship this noble child when he is born. I shall be sure to tell him of the nature of this glorious event."
"We may leave now?"
"Of course you may leave now. Understanding the magnitude of this portent, it would be a tragedy if any great shaman should be kept from witnessing the rise of the winter sun."
"Would you come with us?"
"No; at least, not for now. I must prepare a message for the great king Herod. You three be off; you have no need to stay here with me."
So they left, leaving the astrologer to his own devices. He went up to the watchtower as the onmyouji and their caravan departed. As soon as he stood on the hard stone floor high in the air, surrounded by its four walls and the four smoldering and charred posts that had held up the 'roof', he turned away, towards the inside of the castle. On his shoulder perched a translucent form, shifting and shimmering like mist and glowing with a light like a dying fire. It was a ghostly eagle, hard-eyed and with a beak like a sword. It was his spirit ally.
He took out a parchment from one of the pockets of his robe, and a feather pen, dipping it in a bottle of ink he also found, he began to write. He wrote down the wise men's explanation of the new star that had appeared in the sky. At the bottom he signed his name.
Then he pulled his pendant back out and held it up in front of the eagle. The eagle flew towards it; he held up his other hand near it, which was glowing with a pulsating orange aura of power. The power and the ghost both went into the pendant; the meteoric stone that hung from the chain burst into the hissing flame of a shooting star descending through the atmosphere and burning from the friction of the air.
Andronicus tied the parchment to his newly ignited over soul – it did not burn. He then whirled the pendant around, faster and faster and faster, it orbited his hand like a wild and out-of-control space object – and then a meteor hurtled out of it, the parchment attached to it, burning with a fire of spirit that he controlled so it did not damage the letter. The fire around the shooting star spread into the ragged wings of the eagle-spirit. It flew out of sight in a matter of seconds, arcing over the shape of the rounded Earth.
"Fly, my eagle," Andronicus smiled. "Fly to Herod the king, and bring him his news before the night is done."
Herod will not be pleased, he thought. But Herod does not slay the messenger. I will most likely get promoted for preventing such a catastrophe from befalling his great kingdom. And then Herod will come to the House of Bread. But he shall not come to worship – he shall come to kill.
