Song of Shambhala Serial Novel with embedded music

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Song of Shambhala

 

Chapter One

The lonely shop and the desperate silence of a blank score had troubled me many a night but I met this morning with my first composition in five years. It came to me after I had been struggling to compose a cantata, a choral composition with full orchestra. The results were always the same. A cacophony of uninspired notes splattered across the page. It was no good.

After hours of grasping for musical motives, clawing my way with desperate determination, numbing the pain with ample shots of whiskey, I gathered the scores in my ink stained hands and began ripping them apart, my anger spilling out like a virulent plague for which there was no cure.

After the rage was drained from my body, reminiscent of the ravaging cure of a medieval bloodletting, I picked up the calligraphy pen again. My hand started to move, guided as if by the same mysterious force that moves the planchette of an ouija board, the Song of the Long Dark Night pouring out of me White/Song of Shambhala 1–2.

as lyric and melody began to appear on the page.

"Not getting over that certain pain

This empty feeling won't go away

Go through the paces from day to day

Feel like an alien in this place

It seems the world has gone and passed me by

The method and madness all a careful lie

No point in trying, yet still I try

Maybe I'm sleep walking or have lost my mind"

I could hear the chorus, a great choir singing a haunting melody, the orchestra gloomy and ominous - the cantata had become a requiem, a mass for the dead.

"Kyrie-eleison, Kyrie-eleison

Kyrie-eleison, Have mercy on me

Kyrie-eleison, Kyrie-eleison

Kyrie-eleison, Have mercy on me"

The music overcame me, possessing me with fits of anguish.

"Living in the land of the long dark night

It's a dream graveyard

Where our hopes finally come to die

To die"

The page became my priest, my pen the confessor, my sins and angers heaped upon the strident melody.

"Sacred treasures lost to ancient times.

For the highest bidder I will gladly find

Taking their money while they look for a sign

I want to warn them but soon enough they'll realize

We are the heirs the earth our prize

The many dreams, the many lies

The perfect love, the innocent child

Are willed to us on borrowed time"

Suddenly a sense of calm passed through the room, interposing the dissonant rancor with a sweet counter-melody.

"Sometimes I hear the music

Riding on a gentle breeze

Rising from the shadows

Of my broken dreams

They keep haunting me"

With the impending threat of a rising breaker, the wave of angst began to build till it collapsed under the weight of my despair, crashing once again into the sad refrain.

"Living in the land of the long dark night

It's a dream graveyard

Where our hopes finally come to die

To die"

Finally a sinister suspended chord resolved darkly, moving the composition to a gloomy unwelcome end, when at that moment, the muse of inspiration abandoned my spent body leaving me limp and anemic. I waited for the rush of endorphins to race through my veins and spark my dormant senses to life with the elixir of euphoria. But the White/Song of Shambhala 1–4.

satisfaction I expected to feel never came, as in its place, a scorching anxiety surfaced when I realized I had given birth to a musical work that mourned my own death.

The fiery orange of the morning sun burned through the cobweb framed window of the Ancient Books and Music shop as it rose over the Manhattan skyline. I poured a little more whiskey into a dingy coffee cup while I examined the score in disgust. The desperation was unbearable, the truth the music had revealed, to painful to acknowledge. The ache continued to boil in my gut, like the burning rot of food poison, till it erupted in uncontrollable rage.

"Aaaahhhhhh!!!!" I screamed at the top of my lungs, feeling like God‟s forsaken step child.

I swept the manuscript off the desk and started swinging at anything within reach when several boxes were knocked to the floor revealing a flyer - it was an eviction notice. In a fit of fury I grabbed the notice and began ripping it apart just as the bell on the front door clattered, snapping me out of my violent stupor. I pulled myself together, my hand combing through my tousled hair, as I turned to face the door.

In walked a steely-eyed bully in an impeccable three-piece suit, followed by two larger, younger bodyguards in black gear. They looked serious. While my mind raced trying to remember who I may have pissed off badly enough to send this crew after me, the big guy scanned the room, sizing up the White/Song of Shambhala 1–5.

worth of the inventory before locking his eyes onto me. I had a feeling this was not going to turn out well.

"Are you Sheridan Clark?"

"Yes", I answered, eyeing the three suspiciously.

He tossed a large book on the counter. The title of the custom bound book read: Baton of Shambhala: Source of the Lost Music of Heaven.

"That book was never published." I said, wondering where this was leading.

"Your research is of great interest to certain members of the UN Security Council."

"Sacred music that has been lost for centuries?"

He turned the pages of the book to a glossy middle section, displaying a drawing of an ornate baton.

"No, we're interested in this."

I knew the drawing well.

"The Baton of Shambhala," I mumbled. "Once the Baton of Lucifer himself."

His eyes remained locked onto me.

"Since the beginning of time there was always music, and with this baton, the archangel Lucifer directed the chorus of heaven."

I looked him straight in the eye straining for a clue to his intentions.

"And when he was cast down from heaven?" White/Song of Shambhala 1–6.

I began to trace the drawing with my fingers. "His baton fell to earth, to be lost for millennia," I eased into it. "Till it found its way to..."

"Shambhala." he added knowingly.

 

 

 

 

What gives? I wondered to myself, waiting for the next shoe to drop.

Suddenly the stranger grabbed the book and shoved it under his arm.

"I'll send a car to pick you up tomorrow," he informed me matter of factly; "There‟s something you should see."

"And you are…?"

"The name is Evan Grant and I am someone who needs your expertise, now more than ever."

A smirk spread across his face as he looked around the store. "Unless you‟re busy here?"

I gave him a nod, my teeth clenched tightly as they marched out as abruptly as they came, leaving me with the unpleasant company of my own thoughts.

I have always loved music, especially sacred music. The joyful refrain, the reverent chorus, man‟s humble attempt to speak of a mighty God; have never failed to move me. I gave my life to recovering lost manuscripts of sacred music in the service of the Vatican and have had the privilege of sharing many of them with the world. No moment in my life felt more complete than when conducting a great choir and full orchestra standing awash in beautiful music penned by the hands of men, played for the ears of God. My search for the rare antiquities of sacred music took me all around the world, where all too often I found myself in desperate circumstances, clinging to a remnant of priceless music or carefully coddling an ancient instrument. In those adventurous days of my youth, I considered no risk to great, no course to dangerous in my efforts to uncover the forgotten music of an increasingly forgotten God.

Ultimately, it was this reckless abandon to discover the original source of all sacred music that led to my undoing. It has been a well established tenet of Christian theology that Lucifer was not only the greatest of the archangels but that he was also heaven‟s chief musician. So it came as no surprise to me when I stumbled upon ancient manuscripts revealing that Lucifer once possessed a music baton with which he directed the chorus of heaven. These manuscripts explained that when Lucifer was cast from heaven, his baton fell to earth, to be lost for millennia, till it found its way to Shambhala. There the Baton of Lucifer became the Baton of Shambhala and the green stone, set within the golden prongs that formed its base, became known as the Chintamani Stone.

For as long as it remained a torch of sacred fire atop the King‟s Tower in the city of Shambhala, peace and prosperity endured over all the earth. But the stone‟s magical allure proved to be an irresistible draw to those who sought to possess it for their own evil designs. So the guardians of the stone, in their unselfish wisdom, split the stone into three pieces, placed each supernatural fragment into the trusted hands of one of their greatest warriors, and sent them secretly to the far reaches of the earth, so as to prevent such power from ever being in the hands of a single man. The price of sacrifice was high for the city of Shambhala, for with the Baton of Shambhala no longer imbued with the mystical stone‟s power, the ills of life once held at bay suddenly began to eat away at the cocoon of hidden paradise until the angel of death finally claimed the city with an undiscriminating scourge of disease.

In the ensuing centuries the Chintamani Stones became a hidden force behind the great events and powerful men of history. One of the stones provided the world with a wealth of wisdom when in the hands of King Solomon but others, in the hands of such brutal empire builders as Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan and Akbar the Great, became a source of unstoppable power.

From time to time, one would find reports hidden in the footnotes of history or hear rumors whispered in the most privileged of inner circles, telling of the Chintamani Stone‟s occasional fleeting reappearance. But eventually, the Chintamani stone‟s impact on the events of mankind began to fade till their once recognized contributions to the chronicles of history became attributed to nothing more than the elaborate exaggeration of ancient legend.

For more than a century, no more had been heard of the elusive city of Shambhala or the fabled Chintamani stones until I wrote of my discovery in a book entitled

Baton of Shambhala: Source of the Lost Music of Heaven. The book, while not interesting enough to become published, was apparently dangerous enough to get me fired from my job at the Vatican and lead to calls for my excommunication. The connection I discovered between the Baton of Shambhala and the music of heaven, which I thought would be my greatest achievement, proved to be my ruin and the beginning of my Long Dark Night