Burying the Shadow (28 page)

We erected our
tents and fetched water from the lake before any approach was made
to the Toors. An atmosphere of excitement was building up.
Eventually, Q’orveh emerged from his tepee, with a straggle of
keening entourage, and stalked magnificently over to the sprawling,
decorated tent of the Toorish shaman, beside the lake.

Sah’ray and I
linked arms and, with the rest of the Halmanes, edged forward to
watch. Likewise, the Toors stopped what they were doing and
gathered nearby.

Q’orveh was
admitted to the shaman’s tent and, at this signal, everyone sat
down to wait. Naturally, the two shamans spent considerable time
catching up on gossip, which meant we had to sit around for over an
hour.

Sah’ray,
noting my impatience, began to tell me what I could expect to
experience over the next three days. ‘Tonight, the women will
gather together and perform a group ritual, as will the men,’ she
said. ‘Tomorrow, marriages will be solemnised, matings arranged,
and I will find a man. You could, too, if you’d like.’

She grinned at
me. I smiled thinly in reply. Since setting my attention at Q’orveh
and failing, I’d had little desire to seek carnal company
elsewhere. Perhaps I should.

‘Tomorrow
night, we will have the festival with dancing and wildness and
special magicks. I can’t wait!’ Sah’ray could barely contain her
lusty enthusiasm.

Q’orveh
eventually emerged from the Toorish tent and made a sweeping signal
with his arm. Gratefully, the Halmanes stood up and began to
disperse. Members of the Toors approached them, some people
embracing as they met old friends, or relatives who had married
out-tribe. I was relieved everything had become so friendly.

Sah’ray
introduced me to a group of Toors that she knew - I think a sister
of hers was involved somewhere - and I was invited to their tent
for refreshment. Then, the Shadow slithered up to my side and said,
‘I have to drag you away. Make your excuses.’

‘Why?’ I
demanded, far from pleased.

‘Work for you,
scaper,’ he said, with a sarcastic curve of the lips. ‘Q’orveh, in
his wisdom, wants you to represent the tribe.’

His annoyance
gratified me. ‘Then, of course, I shall. But in what respect?’

‘There is
trouble among the Toors, I think.’

‘What kind of
trouble?’ I didn’t want to get involved in any inter-tribal
dispute.

‘It’s scaping
work, that’s all. You’ll find out. Just stop asking questions and
follow me!’ He marched off towards the Toorish shaman’s tent and I
was forced to run after him. I was intrigued. Soulscaping work
here? And why me? It must mean that the foreigners I had seen did
not include any Taps.

The Toorish shaman,
Toortaki, was little more than a boy and would not speak to me
directly. In some tribes, the shaman will speak only with his
acolytes. Q’orveh was sitting beside this shamanic stripling,
magnificent as a god-form in comparison with the boy, who was
skinny and rather pinched of face. Q’orveh gestured for me to sit,
which I did. Prudently, I held my tongue, waiting for Q’orveh to
speak.

‘There is work
for you here, soulscaper,’ he said.

I nodded. ‘I
was told that, yes.’

‘The Fear is
in one of the Toors. No scaper has yet been able to remove it.’

I didn’t like
the sound of that. ‘I’m not sure I can work miracles where others
have tried and failed,’ I replied. ‘There is no such thing as a
good or bad soulscaper. We are all equal.’ That wasn’t exactly true
- some of us were more skilled than others - but we never admitted
that to outsiders.

Q’orveh’s
expression did not change, yet I think I had embarrassed him.
‘Nevertheless,’ he said smoothly. ‘I have assured the Toors our
soulscaper is the best. You must try, Rayojini.’

‘Of course I
will try,’ I answered, wondering since when I had become ‘their’
soulscaper.

The afflicted
girl was lying in a covered wagon, attended by a woman I supposed
was her mother, or at least a close relative. A whole party of
individuals set out from the shaman’s tent, all of whom insisted on
being present during my initial examination. Inside, the wagon was
pungent and dark, the space cramped. They were not the best
conditions in which to conduct a physical inspection. I addressed
the girl’s relative. ‘Other soulscapers have examined this
girl?’

She nodded,
her mouth pursed tightly as if she had been forbidden to speak.

‘Are any of
them still with the tribe?’

Again, a nod.

Q’orveh was
squatting beside me, his bare knees poking out of his robes and
touching my thigh. Not one to resist an impulse, I put my hand on
his shoulder. He did not move away or tense himself, so I applied a
gentle pressure. ‘I would like to speak with these other scapers,’
I said, in a low voice.

‘Of course,’
he murmured back, his face so close to me, I could smell the herbs
on his breath. ‘Perhaps you should examine this girl yourself
first, though.’

‘Very
well.’

She was in her
early teens, a pretty little thing, whose eyes were wide and
staring. I opened her mouth, looked inside, sniffed her breath. It
was rank, a sure sign. I rolled back her eyelids, noted the colour
of her eyes, the marks upon this colour, the size of the blackness
at its core. I felt her skin, and scrutinised the palms of her
hands for sign of mental illness. It seemed she was a
straightforward case. I couldn’t imagine why other scapers hadn’t
been successful in healing her. Obviously, they wouldn’t have
revealed their difficulties to the Toors; I would have to speak
with them myself. On an impulse, I made a quick examination of the
girl’s torso and belly. A thought came to me. ‘Your tribe healers
have examined her?’

The woman
nodded again.

‘You must
understand there will a degree of risk involved in scaping; the
girl is pregnant.’

‘No!’ the
woman said indignantly. ‘That is not possible.’

‘The signs
seem clear,’ I replied gently. ‘Perhaps a healer should be summoned
to make sure.’

There were
discrepancies between the physical symptoms and that of the eyes,
but I was positive I was not mistaken. Very shortly, an elderly
woman came into the wagon. Except for the two shamans, the rest of
the men were dismissed. Both the healer and I made a careful
examination of the girl. She was, as I had suspected, with child.
She was also, (again I’d had my suspicions), virgin. Q’orveh and I
exchanged a glance.

I whispered in
his ear. ‘This pregnancy should be terminated.’

He nodded, and
turned to Toortaki. The boy was looking rather stunned and green
about the face; I suspected it might have been the first time he’d
encountered the genitals of a female. Q’orveh briefly told Toortaki
what he had heard on the road concerning virgin births. He gave
rather a lurid description of the deformed deer-child. Although the
implications in his words were clear to me, I could tell they
weren’t really suggesting the same thing to Toortaki. Q’orveh could
not be as blunt as was obviously necessary, because some tribes had
very strict religious codes about pregnancy, and he would be wary
of giving offence. I ended up becoming impatient and, offensive or
not, stated my recommendation in plain terms. The whole situation
was repellent.

‘I feel this
pregnancy should be terminated immediately,’ I said. ‘At least
before any further attempts at soulscaping are made. It might be a
fluke this has happened. Shared bathing water, I have heard, can
lead to the quickening of a child, but even so, I do not think any
risks should be taken. A girl’s life is at stake, if not her
sanity.’

Support came
unexpectedly from the girl’s relative. ‘You are right. I will boil
some water,’ she said, and squeezed her way past the shamans to
leave the wagon.

I was not sure
how the Toors felt about such procedures, or even if their healer
knew how to accomplish them. All soulscapers have a fair amount of
medical training, and resolving unwanted pregnancies was a common
feature of our work. I was perfectly capable of dealing with it and
said so. The Toorish shaman gave his permission for me to proceed,
almost without thinking about it. The healer readily agreed to
assist me. A shadow of the Fear was over all of us in that wagon, I
am sure.

There is
little need to dwell upon the details of what we did to rid that
poor girl of whatever had come to inhabit her body. The foetus was
indeed bizarre, yet it was difficult to discern whether its
expulsion from the womb had deformed it, or whether it had grown
that way. I knew we were most likely to see peculiarities in
everything at that point and tried to remain objective.

‘We need to
talk,’ Q’orveh said to a white-faced Toortaki. ‘Both tribes.’

The boy
nodded. He looked so ill, I thought I’d better mix him a quelling
potion as soon as we left the wagon. ‘We will meet before the
celebrations,’ he said, in a thick, constricted voice. ‘I will
summon the elders.’

‘And the
soulscapers,’ Q’orveh added.

Toortaki
shrugged. I sensed reluctance, but he said, ‘If you wish. I think
we should talk privately first, however.’

‘I would like
to confer with these scapers myself,’ I said. ’Perhaps we could
talk together while the tribe elders are meeting.’

‘That seems
sensible,’ Q’orveh said.

I smiled at
him gratefully; he was being an ally.

As we came out
of the wagon, eager to escape its stink of blood, I said, ‘Q’orveh,
I would like to speak with you, too. Alone, if that’s possible.’ It
was too good an opportunity to miss.

‘It is
difficult to be alone,’ he said, but seemed amenable to the idea.
‘Among the tribes, aloneness is a thing to be avoided. We thrive in
each other’s company.’

‘I have things
I want to discuss, and I, being a loner, thrive in intimate
situations,’ I replied, with a careful smile. Already, I could see
members of the Halmanes preparing to converge on the focus of their
tribe. I wanted to say, ‘Get rid of them’, but realised that might
be going too far. ‘Where shall we go?’ I asked hurriedly.

‘My canopy.
You can have your privacy there.’

‘I thank you.
However, I feel certain of your intimates will attempt to prevent
our being alone.’

He gave me a
strange look. ‘There is no-one there,’ he said. ‘I am sure of
that.’

‘Q’orveh, what
is the Holy Death?’

We were
sitting in his tent. It was dark, with the door curtain shut fast.
Incense smouldered sullenly in a dish; we were wrapped in smoky
perfume. Q’orveh reclined upon his cushions, long-limbed and lithe,
like an archetypal soulscape vision of male beauty. His tangles of
matted hair were like an animal’s mane, trailing the length of his
spine; dusty, and lighter in colour at the ends where the sun and
rain had bleached it. He smelled like an animal; clean, but muskily
aromatic. We were so close, yet I was aware that his body language
did not incline towards me. I kept my voice low, expecting the
shadow of Keea to manifest, at any moment, in a corner, his dark
eyes watching keenly.

Q’orveh
appeared puzzled by my question. ‘I cannot believe the soulscapers
don’t know,’ he said.

I shook my
head. ‘No, you misunderstand. I just want to know what it means to
you
, your tribe, your own explanation for it.’

Q’orveh
narrowed his eyes. ‘You are soon going to say something connected
with this subject that I will not enjoy hearing.’

I raised my
hands. ‘Maybe so, but, until I have spoken with the other
soulscapers here, there is no one, other than yourself, whom I can
trust. Also, you said you wanted to discover the cause of the
strange phenomena on the road, how and why. Please, answer my
question. I will explain its relevance shortly.’

‘Very well. To
us, it is the Sacred Paling, when a person takes on the colour of
the moon, glowing from within to symbolise its holy
connotations.’

‘What do you
mean by holy?’ I interrupted. I knew little of nomad mythology, not
having had much opportunity to meet its glyphs in the soulscape.
Soon, I felt, that would change.

‘The god takes
them. They are sacrifices to the Gardling, Helat.’

‘Your
god?’

He nodded. ‘We
have only one. Helat. An androgyne who regenerates and has a host
of offspring, all of whom hide in the world, influencing the ways
of men. Helat has three breasts. One squirts nectar, one blood and
the other poison. You can imagine how this symbolism is
incorporated into the most secret of our rites.’

‘I think so.
So, those who die the Holy Death are taken by Helat.’

‘Well, we say
that the members of the host take them.’

‘The children
of Helat?’

‘Yes. Some
believe we are the product of these children mating with men and
women, which is why we are part unman. The children of Helat are
very beautiful. It is said they can appear to a person out alone on
the plains, and lure them into an endless embrace. People have died
that way.’

‘It is
said
...’

Q’orveh
shrugged. ‘We have only imagination. No-one survives the embrace of
the host to tell of it.’

‘Until now...
maybe.’

Q’orveh raised
an interested eyebrow. Perhaps my heresy wasn’t as fearsome as he’d
thought it would be. ‘What are you suggesting?’

I shrugged.
‘It is only a guess... May I present my theory? It is this. Suppose
the non-deaths are ‘failed’ Sacred Palings.’

‘Intellectually, I might suppose it. But, what do you mean by that?
The host are losing their power?’

I doubted whether it
was a good idea to tell this man I did not believe in his god, or
its children. I did not believe in any god outside the confines of
the soulscape. I had stupidly thought Q’orveh to be as rational as
a Tap. He wasn’t. He still gave his inner symbols external life, as
his people did.