Silk-Roads and Shadows

This is a travel story, the story of a journey undertaken by a Byzantine princess, Alexandra, who cannot remain in Byzantium because she is too popular and represents too great a threat to her unpopular brother, the Emperor.

While he is wondering what to do with her (she has just saved his life and that of his son and heir from their sorceress aunt) she volunteers to go to China to steal silkworms and bring them back (the aunt has also put a blight on the silkworms and all have died).

The aunt's venom follows her as she makes her way with her friends and followers along the fabled Silk Road, up into the mountains of Pamir and from there across the Takla Makan, the great demon-infested desert. Again and again she survives confrontations with Evil and Death, often thanks to the intervention of one called Rudra Cakrin, the legendary King of Shamballah. And at each stage she receives a token, for she is also on another journey, following the Diamond Path, Vajrayana.

(This will ring a bell with yoga enthusiasts: vajrasana, the adamantine (or diamond) posture. In this story, Vajrayogini is the patron/goddess of the Diamond Path and at one point they pass a huge statue of her carved into the side of a mountain.)

Alexandra reaches China, but her troubles are far from over.

"Err on the other paths," a tulku tells Alexandra, "and your Way is only prolonged. Err on the Diamond Path ... and you topple into the pit." On at least two occasions, she seems actually to have toppled. Only her own determination - and sheer incorruptibility - enable her to climb back out. That and the aid of Rudra Cakrin, which is ever present (though in varying incarnations!) as long as she remains on the path he has set her.

Magical.

MBG

I cannot find any site where Silk Roads and Shadows is available new let us know if you do!) but - for the moment - if you loved that book (as we did), and are interested in odd, outsider religions of the Middle Ages like Nestorianism (as we are), (or even if you have not read it, but while you are waiting), you will certainly enjoy Religions of the Silk Road, Richard C. Foltz's enthralling book about the religions and cultures of the peoples who lived along the great road to China from ancient times till the fifteenth century.

SILK-ROADS AND SHADOWS

Susan Shwartz

Medieval Magic

> sorcery - an Orthodox abbess, aunt to the Emperor of Byzantium, turns to the dark side

> ghosts - including the thousands of life-size statues of a dead army from the First Emperor's tomb, on the move once more, and unstoppable

> demons - especially in the desert, the Takla Makan

> the King and hosts of Shamballah - Rudra Cakrin

> the Diamond Path, Vajrayana

> the Fenris wolf, and Hela

Medieval Outsiders

> a Nestorian priest

> a Varangian (Viking) guardsman in love with a Byzantine princess

> Li Shou, a Chinese prince, cosmopolitan and widely-travelled in a time of Chinese xenophobia

> a were-fox and her kits