These bright students of Meru, the shishyas, were hunting for a certain type of seed in the woods, which helped in lighting alchemical lanterns. Meru had been founded by the Saptarishis, the Holy Seven, thousands of years ago, to train tomorrow’s promising Acharyas. The Seven had wanted a safe haven where they could secretly teach bright Namin children the ways of knowledge and world-dominion. And what better place for such education than a fortress nestled between two icy peaks of the Mai Layas, high above and far away from the rest of the realm? A graduate of Meru, much like a graduate of any other Meru-certified gurukul, became an Acharya. If you were a good Acharya, with top scores, you were sent to Emperors and Kings as advisors, to help with matters of law, polity, and the occasional childbirth of underage Queens. If you were the kind who hung from the cliff of passing marks, you were assigned to lower Lords and Guilds, though most of these graduates preferred the world of academia. They either continued in Meru as absentee Acharyas, or opened private gurukuls in their hometowns.

Meru had not always been an idyllic place. In days of yore, Meru had turned for a brief period into a training camp for would-be terrorists, who joined the ranks of the army of the Bane of Ksharjas, Acharya Parshuram, for the chance to kill tyrannical Ksharjas in the Century of Blood. And like any great romance, the fire fizzled out after the first few waves of genocide. After the Great Peace Accord between the Ksharjas and the Namins, Meru had been demoted, or promoted, depending on your perspective, to a mere citadel of learning.

Of late, the Saptarishis too, were no longer heard of. Rumours abounded that the Seven had discontinued their business of king-making. No one has seen a Saptarishi for almost a hundred years. The faculty at Meru had long ago confronted this, and had in fact, perfected various devices to ensure it. After all, running terror training camps was tiring work. Hard work wasn’t what one had in mind when one chose to be a teacher. With the Saptarishis disappearing behind the metaphorical curtain, the more liberal teachers of Meru had begun opening the doors of the citadel to outsiders. Talk of minority representation and the rise of new rulers in places like Mathura and the Sindh Guild, in what academicians called ‘fringe society’, required Meru to change with the times or let go of a significant supply of fees in the form of gurudakshina3.