Burying the Shadow (10 page)

Ushas had
received a commission from one of the merchant families in
Sacramante; a minor problem, they avowed, and hardly urgent, but
one that they felt merited arrest at the hands of the most
celebrated of soulscapers. Ushas was not the most celebrated of
soulscapers, but she was one of the most glamorous, and also the
only glamorous soulscaper currently available for commission. Her
guild had apportioned her the job.

‘I feel it’s
about time you got off the mountain,’ Ushas had said to me, just
after we’d finished the celebratory meal following her official
commission. For a few moments, I had been intensely irritated,
having been looking forward to being left to my own devices at
home. Ushas did not fuss or place strictures on my behaviour, but I
had already learned the singularly precious joy of having the
hollow to myself. Sometimes, she had to present herself for further
training at the guild dreys, when she would return exhausted after
a week or so, and sleep for several days. Other times, she’d get
itchy feet, and make small forays into Lansaal on shopping
expeditions for luxuries we could not buy in Taparak. While I was
still a young child, the guild did not send her away on long
‘scaping jobs, but as I grew older, she had started disappearing
for weeks at a time. Both of us, I think, were grateful for the
space that gave us. By this time, we had risen in the Taparak
stratum, and occupied a drey only three levels below that of the
scryers. When we’d first moved home, I had missed the ground
bustle, but had since fallen in love with the feeling of open air
around us, the play of winds among the thinner branches, the
illusion that one could be all alone.

I had applied
myself earnestly to my studies - being an earnest young woman all
round - and would soon be considered capable enough to ply the
Tappish trade abroad in the land. Training had had its ups and
downs; sometimes I had sunk into despair, thinking I’d never
develop the necessary skills. But now, I was beginning to feel more
confident and could slip with ease into the scaping trance.

The first time
I had experimented with the fumes had been terrifying. No matter
how much my tutor reassured me she would remain with me as a guide,
I still feared losing myself in the soulscape. The basis of the
scaping-mixes is a strange substance, a resin derived from a hardy
mountain plant, which can be harvested in two ways. The first is to
produce a blend simply for scrying, which is the superficial
examination of the soulscape - rather than truly entering it - or
inspecting the contents other people’s minds. For this mix, the
plants are milked through a small cut and the resulting milk-ooze
is allowed to harden and dry. The second method is the one by which
we produce a strong scaping-fume that truly alters conscious
awareness and allows ingress to the soulscape. Scry bugs feed upon
the plant, absorbing huge amounts for their body weight of the
active substance in the sap. If the bugs themselves are harvested,
crushed and dried, incorporated into a fume mix with raw plant
resin, a far more potent fume is produced. Quite how it works upon
the human frame, we do not know. The effect is this: two or more
people breathing in enough of the fume can enter each other’s
mindscape, and from there, should they be familiar with the path,
the soulscape. Gradually, as the fume is ingested into the lungs,
outer reality fades. At first, there is a confusion of colours and
sensations - impossible to describe - but if regular breathing and
tranquillity of thought are maintained, the inner landscapes of
each individual are allowed to touch, and the consciousness of
everyone present may wander at will in the new territory.
Naturally, the technique has its dangers, which is why we
soulscapers undergo such protracted training. An inexperienced, or
untrained, person should never attempt to use the scry-bug fume.
Without proper control, the individual can become lost in an alien
scape, where they remain as an unwanted and disruptive presence,
eventually driving the host insane. More than a few soulscaping
cases have involved unravelling such amateurish attempts at
scape-sharing. Lamentably, unscrupulous individuals in Taparak are
willing to purloin and sell the fume-mix off-mountain for a high
profit. Many thrill-seekers indulge in illicit scape-sharing, and
most of that number end up in trouble. Fortunately, perhaps, it is
rare that anybody rescued from such a traumatic condition attempts
to repeat the experiment. In fact, there are individuals who, once
led back to reality, have made it their life’s-work to travel
around warning others about the practice. They are usually rather
demented in their approach, however, and generally end up joining
the priesthood of some religion or another.

As trainees, I
and my peers were taught not only how to enter the soulscape and
wander in it at will, but also to manipulate the information and
symbolism we might find there. Initially, all trainees were closely
monitored, and our tutor, Tiji, would always accompany us. Later,
we were allowed to burn the resin in pairs, but it was a long time
until we were ever let near someone whose soulscape was less than
healthy. The first experience of the inner realm is impossible to
describe, but the feelings it invokes are those of terror, wonder
and sheer disbelief. There are landscapes there, but they are like
nothing seen on Earth; gone are the restrictions of natural order;
these are the kingdoms of the imagination, where nothing is
impossible or too bizarre to exist. Naturally, not everyone is
sturdy enough to withstand the soulscape, and several of my
classmates had to drop out of the training. This was not regarded
as a failure, because the Taps believe everyone has a skill for
something. Those who could not work within the soulscape were
encouraged to find a vocation in another craft. Secretly, though,
those of us who had the strength to carry on were very proud of
ourselves. Only a week before Ushas and I left the mountain, I had
completed my first scaping task.

People from
Lansaal, who could not afford the statutory fee of the soulscapers,
would send their mindsick relatives to the city, in order to take
advantage of guild offers, which promised free healing for those
who volunteered to let trainees work on them. My first case
involved a young girl, who had been paralysed by a fragment of the
Fear. The healing had taken place in my tutor’s residence, all the
light boles sealed from light and air. Even now, I can remember how
nervous I’d been as I’d mixed the fume in Tiji’s watchful, but
unobtrusive, presence. She had sat close enough to partake of the
fume but did not assume an active role in the work. The girl lay,
open-eyed, on a pallet at my feet, her breathing shallow. As I
breathed in the potent fume, I silently invoked my
guardian-pursuers, instinctively addressing the more female aspect,
with which I felt secure. What would the Fear look like? Would it
attack me? It seemed a soft, sweet voice was in my head, murmuring
reassurance. ‘I am with you, Rayo. I will keep you safe.’

Gradually, the
shapes and colours of the outside world began to fade, and I closed
my eyes. The soulscape can be seen whether one is physically
looking at it or not. In effect, you cannot close your eyes on it.
The inner landscape of the sick girl was a silent town, its streets
empty of people and littered with rubbish. I recognised the
building that symbolised her own mind, because it was covered with
dark, poisonous-looking lichen. All the doors and windows were
covered with it. My first instinct was to call to Tiji and ask her
what to do, but I thought better of it. I knew what she would say:
use your imagination. Fight symbol with symbol. I approached the
building and hesitantly picked at the lichen with my fingernails.
It was crumbly and dusty and I soon cleared a patch of window,
which allowed me to look inside the house. The girl’s soul sat upon
the floor of an empty room, her face devoid of features: no eyes,
no nose, no mouth. She had truly shut herself away from the Fear
that had crept up upon her mind and enclosed her. I banged on the
window and said, ‘Wake up!’ The girl shivered but did not change
her position or appearance. I scraped frantically at the powdery
lichen, all the time talking loudly, hoping to reach the frightened
scrap of consciousness inside the room. ‘Look how easily it comes
away. Why don’t you come and help me? This stuff is nothing
really... Come on, wake up. Help me clean your house.’

As more light came
into the room, it seemed the girl came into focus. I could discern
the shape of her face more easily, features were becoming
prominent. Eventually, she opened her eyes, got up and walked to
the window.

‘What are you
doing out there?’ she asked. ‘Who are you?’

I wanted to
smash through the panes and hug her. ‘I am a soulscaper,’ I said
proudly. ‘And I’m here to clean your house.’

‘It doesn’t
need cleaning!’ The girl had a distinctly accusatory tone.

I was about to
argue, but one glance up at the walls convinced me to shut my
mouth. The Fear had gone. It was that simple. Joyfully, I stepped
back and concentrated on returning to normal consciousness. Tiji
was there to greet me, her arms around the girl on the pallet, who
was trying to sit up, making small sounds of distress.

‘Don’t let
this success go to your head, girl,’ Tiji said, her wide mouth
pulled into a grin. ‘This was an easy one.’ Then, because I must
have looked a little crestfallen, she leaned forward to squeeze my
arm. ‘But well done, all the same.’

Soon
afterwards, I realised just how easy that job had been. The Fear
was usually inclined to assume forms of a more aggressive or
elusive nature. Sometimes, it would take more than one session to
root it out, never mind dispel it. But that first job is the one I
remember best. It confirmed for me that I was firmly on the
soulscaping path. Within a year or so, I would be ready to pass
from the guild college and sent on my first scaping-range abroad.
That did not mean I would be given a commission; I would simply
travel from town to town, seeking work on my own. After two years,
I would have to return to Taparak, and pay the set earnings figure
to the guild; what I made over that amount would be mine to keep,
although I was already aware that most soulscapers existed by
bartering their talents for food and shelter, on the road. This
first journey, with my mother, would help prepare me for the
future.

After
alighting, with unsteady feet, onto the eighth level, my mother led
the way on foot down the curling, wide ramp which would open out on
the shore. The ramp was busy that day, traders coming and going, a
mountebank performing in a recess of the rock, earning oriels for
his excesses. Voices shouted, animals brayed and huffed, carts
creaked and groaned. Soon, the raft on which we had travelled down
would be raised aloft once more, carrying passengers and trading
goods up to Taparak. All these new stimuli quickly expelled the
shakes of the journey down. We came to a place where the sea
thrashed into a vast underground cave, and boats were moored to
great iron rings in the rock. The ramp turned a corner and there
was the splendid vista of the Womb of the Land ahead of us, crammed
with the bright masts and sails of Lannish vessels. Carrying our
bags, I followed Ushas to the quayside. There was a small community
hugging the narrow strip of land between the mountain and the sea
at this point; a perilous position. In winter, it was flogged by
angry waves, and the marketeers and boatmen retreated into deep
caves above tide level, where they lived together until the spring.
Come that time, the stone town-strip would be repaired, and the
Womb would be thronged with boats once more.

The quay was a
forest of masts and rigging; ships of all sizes jostling together.
Skinny boys in ragged trousers, torn off at the knees, leapt from
deck to deck, carrying messages, cargo and luggage, or else selling
whatever was portable to boatmen from the mainland, and their
passengers. Groups of girls, arms linked, wearing marvellous tiered
gowns of dark green, indigo and sulky, dull gold, strolled up and
down the promenade, singing of stars and crystal; they were scryers
of a lesser nature, who had never belonged to a guild and whose
talents, my mother told me, were negligible.

I happily
basked in all the colour and noise as Ushas secured us passage on
one of the ferries. Once on the mainland, we would join a
mule-train to Toinis - just a day’s journey - where a Bochanegran
carriage awaited us. I had begun to wonder what Sacramante would be
like, having forgotten how annoyed I’d been when Ushas had first
suggested I accompany her there.

We boarded a
small boat, along with about half a dozen other passengers. Once we
were out upon the waves, all my youthful zest began to soar. I
leaned into the wind, against the edge of the boat, and let the
wind take hold of my hair, closing my eyes against the scent and
spray. Ushas sat cross-legged with the boatman’s boy and played
Conquer, with a patterned gaming-board and men of different
colours. She always won at this game so, when he shouted out in
triumph, I knew she must have had a soft spot for the boy, and had
cheated at a loss. I turned and caught her eye, narrowing my own,
smiling. She nodded back, with the kind of smile on her face where
the mouth turns down at the corners. I had been practising that
expression for years and still couldn’t manage to do it as well as
she did. Today, we were women travelling together, soulscapers on
the road, and we could conserve our power by cheating fate to
others’ advantage. It is a strange code we live by.

Landfall came
at Cozca, a relatively small town stuck out on a promontory, north
east of Toinis. We sat down outside a tavern, in the shade of an
ilex tree, and sipped at steaming tankards of bitter myrrh-broth,
whose perfume clawed the throat like a drug. The land seemed so
flat to me, the town so sprawling. And how wide the streets were.
Soon, even before the shadows had lengthened into evening, a
muleteer came to pin her schedule to the tree. Ushas lost no time
in appending our mark. Tomorrow, we would ride to Toinis. A night
was spent in relative comfort in a Cozcan
fohndahk
near the
tavern, where we took a room overlooking the ilex tree. After
dining, we sat out on the
fohndahk
patio and watched the
funeral line of a local man sway past; the casket drawn on a sledge
by two oxen festooned in purple ribbons. The mourners came behind,
singing of holy sacrifice, by which we understood the deceased had
died the Holy Death, pale as winter orchids on his last bed.