Burying the Shadow (29 page)

‘What I mean,
Q’orveh, is that I feel we have to establish exactly what the Holy
Death is, to understand why it has changed. If it has.’

‘There are
some things we must not question too closely,’ he replied. ‘We are
only human and must not presume upon the territory of gods.’

I smiled.
‘Q’orveh, I do that all the time. It’s my job.’

Unfortunately,
he took offence at that. His face hardened. ’I think I can
understand why so many of the shamans will not tolerate a
soulscaper in their path. They say you rival the host, or presume
to. Rayo, you are only a woman of flesh and blood.’

‘So what do we
do? Sit back and let things happen?’

‘I don’t think
there is anything we can do. It is beyond our powers. We can only
appease the Helat in whatever way we can. Rites, prayers...’

I had to
interrupt him. ‘You called me to speak with you first, Q’orveh.
Now, I
am
speaking! Why are you backing away?’

‘I feel it is
becoming too dangerous. Anyway, your flimsy theory hardly explains
the other things we’ve discovered; the blood places, the...
births.’

I had no
answer for that. He was right. ‘I just don’t have enough
information, that’s all.’ I stared at him steadily. ‘Q’orveh, don’t
try to deceive me; you yourself suspect the Sacred Palings and the
non-deaths are connected. I know you do.’

‘I do not deny
it,’ he answered smoothly. ‘But I still question whether we have
any right to interfere.’

‘Even when
your dead walk?’

His face had become
stone. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t want to discuss this any further
until the tribe elders have met. Perhaps you should go and find
your compatriots now.’

I was stung;
he had dismissed me.

The
soulscapers travelling with the Toors, two of them, were unknown to
me. They were brother and sister, natives of the eastern eyries of
Taparak, and a good deal younger than me. Aniti was a strong-boned
handsome girl with wide, thick eyebrows, while her brother Juro was
more slender, his eyes unusually pale. Perhaps their youth and
inexperience explained why they had not been able to heal the
Toorish girl.

It was late
afternoon by the time we got to speak and I, feeling superior in
the face of their lack of years, doubted strongly whether I would
benefit from our consultation. They, on the other hand, might learn
much from me. They had a tent to themselves - clearly demonstrating
just how valuable soulscapers were becoming to the nomads of Khalt,
who at one time used to interact with stray Taps by plucking out
their eyes, or skewering them through if they dared to practice
their art among the tribes.

Aniti and Juro
were shy in my presence; I felt my voice was too loud and hearty. I
wasn’t sure where to begin and asked them who their mentor was. It
was someone I was only vaguely familiar with, a woman of no
particular note. I wondered whether these two were actually being
coerced to stay with the Toors in some way. ‘You have been
travelling on the plains long?’ I enquired.

Aniti
shrugged. A while. Suddenly there is much to be learned from the
Khalts, but we have found it tiring.’

‘Really?’

The boy
nodded. ‘It is as if the Fear itself flits from person to person
among the Toors. We drive it from some poor soul, only for it to
manifest, moments later, in the being of another. The shaman is
impressed with our ability; whereas we are unsure of our level of
success.’

I had been tutored in
how, among close communities, people could develop sympathetic
soulscape discrepancies. What the children should have done was
travelled deep into the collective soul of the tribe and rooted out
the rot from there. All individual soulscapes are connected; it is
merely a matter of perception, and use of a more potent fume, to
enter a consensual scape. I told them this.

The girl took
exception to my tone. Her face flamed a little. ‘We have tried
that!’ she said indignantly. ‘It hides.’

I couldn’t
repress a laugh. ‘Hides? Really, child. Those are not words I’d
hope to hear a soulscaper say.’

‘You have not
experienced it,’ she replied. ‘Perhaps you should - before you
upbraid us.’

Her brother
muttered a warning, but I did not take offence. Both of them looked
bone-tired, muddy of face, and drawn.

‘The nomads
seem to be experiencing a number of delusions,’ I said. ‘Soulscape
hallucinations, maybe.’

‘If you are
referring to the blood places and the un-beasts, they are not
delusions,’ Juro said. ‘We have seen them or, perhaps you think we
are suffering the same delusions?’

‘It is
sometimes dangerous to believe the evidence of our eyes,’ I
replied. ‘We are only human, after all. Use your art.’

‘Use our art?
Are you blind, Mistress Rayojini?’ snapped the girl. ‘I am
frightened. There is something happening, and it is beyond us. The
nomad shamans consider themselves superior to soulscapers, yet now
they turn to us in desperation. We cannot help them.’

‘There is an
answer to everything,’ I said. My patience was beginning to fray.
‘We have only to gather up the clues. Now, the elders of both
tribes are meeting and soon they will expect us to speak to them. I
feel it is important we present some plan of action. I, for one,
have no wish to invoke any negative assumptions the nomads might
still have about us. Even if we are confused, we must not let them
know that we are.’

‘You admit to
confusion, then?’ Juro asked me, tartly.

I shrugged. ‘I
feel I’m in the dark, yes, but panicking won’t solve anything. We
must be vigilant. If I were you, I’d return to Taparak as soon as
possible. The scryers must be informed of what is occurring
here.’

‘You mean we
should leave these people to their fate?’ Aniti asked. She was
clearly an idealist.

‘Or leave them
to you?’ added Juro, who was a cynic.

I declined to
answer their impertinent questions. ‘Listen, we three will journey
into the soulscape of Toor. Maybe you are right, and we will find
nothing, but we can plant assurances, seeds of strength. This is
what we shall tell the conclave of elders.’

Rayojini

‘
And when the sun
begins to fling his flaring beams, me goddess bring to arched walks
of twilight groves and shadows brown…’

From ‘Il
Penseroso’, Milton

Q’orveh hosted the
meeting of elders and, later, the young scapers and I were summoned
to his tent. There was hardly any room to sit down, and I sensed
that not everybody welcomed our presence. Ignoring any hostile
resonance, I spoke confidently to the elders of both tribes,
impressing upon them how strongly I believed that there was a
simple explanation for all they had experienced recently.

‘The answer
lies in the soulscape, I am sure,’ I told them. ‘The strange things
you have seen and experienced might well seem very real, but they
could just be the products of your imaginations.’

This caused a
cacophony of angry denial. I raised my hands.

‘Please, let
me explain. It is possible to create physical matter, or at least a
convincing illusion of such, by the power of thought alone. For
example, the virgin births; perhaps the girls concerned imagined
they were impregnated, and believed it so much, because the
illusion of coupling had been so real, that they
created
something that resembled a child.’

Juro and Aniti
were sitting just behind me, and I could sense they thought I was
speaking utter folly. I had no doubt this opinion was shared by
everyone else sitting in the tent. Perhaps I should have kept my
mouth shut. Nobody actually contradicted me; they simply ignored my
words. I had hoped for intelligent debate. I should have known
better. These were nomads, not a select gathering of Tappish
adepts.

One of the old
Toorish women followed my remarks with an impassioned and ignorant
sentiment of her own. ‘You could be making the problem worse with
your meddling!’ She was an ancient, stick-like creature, whose lips
had receded and tightened so much that her face strongly resembled
a grinning skull.

I remained
calm. ‘We do not meddle, madam, I assure you. We bring light to the
places that are over-run with shadows.’ At that point, I could not
resist flicking a glance at Keea. He was staring right back at me
and smiled slightly when our eyes met. Incredibly, my face grew
hot.

‘Some places
are meant to be shadowed,’ the woman continued relentlessly,
casting a narrowed eyed glance around the tent, seeking allies.

‘Of course
they are. Notice I said ‘over-run’. Please don’t warp my
words.’

Q’orveh raised
his hands, clearly having little desire for individuals annexed to
his tribe to argue in public. ‘Perhaps you have formed an opinion
while speaking with your fellow Taps,’ he said, hopefully.

I shrugged.
‘Seems to me we should enter the
tribal
soulscape, and root
out the problem from there.’ That the tribe possessed a soulscape
of its own was clearly a new concept to the Toorish elders.

My original
opponent slapped her gums together juicily and took up the sword
again. ‘Blasphemy!’ she screeched. ‘The soulscapers intend to
violate the gardens of Helat!’

I turned round
and rolled my eyes at Juro and Aniti, who grimaced back. At that
moment, I was glad to have fellow rational beings with me, whatever
their youth and inexperience.

‘I think, if
any soulscape is to be entered,’ Toortaki said, ’it should be that
of the girl we attended this afternoon. Can more than one
soulscaper work together?’

‘Of course,’ I
said. Once within the girl’s soulscape, we could perhaps extend our
consciousness to encompass that of the whole tribe.

‘Well, then,
everything is clear,’ Q’orveh said. He turned to me. ‘Mistress
Rayojini, you and the other soulscapers will enter the soulscape of
the Toorish girl, and report back to us. Then we shall have the
answers we need.’ His faith in me, even if it was only superficial
in front of these others, was endearing.

It was decided
that we would begin our work as soon as possible, so that it would
be concluded long before the women’s rite was due to commence. I
understood the mystery ceremonies were destined to take place just
before midnight.

I asked the
Toors to take the sick girl out of the wagon; it had a miasma of
despair about it, in which I had no desire at all to work. Juro and
Aniti helped me choose an alternative working-place among the trees
nearby, where we would be screened from noise and the eyes of
others. Q’orveh thoughtfully provided a company of young men - to
stand apart, but who would keep curious people away.

We erected a
canopy around the working area to contain the scaping fume, and
then built a fire onto which we would cast the strongest of our
scaping mixes. The sick girl lay comatose at our feet, oblivious of
our preparations.

‘This is a
waste of time,’ Aniti grumbled. ‘Believe me, her soulscape will be
filled with happy spirits and sweet memories of childhood. There
will be no fear to find, no shadows hiding.’

‘I leave no
stone unturned,’ I said to her, quite sharply. ‘In the soulscape or
outside of it. The Fear
is
there. It just hasn’t been
recognised as such.’

Aniti stomped
off to gather twigs for our fire. I appealed to her brother.
‘Whatever it sounds like, I don’t mean to be harsh. But having
that
attitude won’t solve anything. ‘

‘What if
Aniti’s right?’ Juro asked me, carefully neutral in tone.

‘Then I’ll
admit I was wrong, naturally, but I think the chance of that is
very slim.’

When the fire
was ready, Aniti cast a generous amount of my scaping-mix into the
flames. The three of us arranged ourselves in sitting positions
around the prone body of the Toorish girl, and linked hands.
Breathing deeply, we began to suck the sweet smoke of the fume into
our lungs. Aniti’s fingers gripped me tightly; I had a feeling she
was not without fear herself at that time.

As Aniti had
predicted, when we passed into the soulscape, we emerged into a
landscape of exuberant radiance, where everything was gilded with
light.
Yes,
I thought,
this is indeed the summer land of
childhood.
Our presence was the only dark thing there.

Normally, when
a scaper enters the soulscape, the Fear will come to flap around
their head. Its guises vary; sometimes it is just a black wing of
darkness, sometimes an ugly and malevolent apparition but, whatever
its shape, the Fear is a senseless force. It has no consciousness
and therefore lacks the instinct for self-preservation. To defeat
it, a soulscaper has only to visualise weapons of a suitable
nature. The material of the soulscape is malleable; it is possible
to form anything you need there, simply by the power of thought,
whether that is fire, or steel or ice. Sometimes, confrontation
alone will expel a weak fragment of the fear; you can chase it away
or simply visualise its evaporation, order it to depart. Conflicts
vary. There is rarely any need for a scaper to roam a great
distance into the soulscape, because the Fear will come hurtling
towards them like a stupid, savage dog. However, in this case, it
seemed Aniti might have been right in her assumptions. The Fear, if
it was here at all, was in hiding, or at least disguised in some
way. I felt uneasy with the implications in that. Could the Fear
develop intelligence, a kind of survival instinct? Was that the new
demon we were facing, Fear with consciousness? Would that explain
all the strange phenomena occurring? I hoped not. If the Fear had
evolved significantly, then soulscapers would have to develop a
more puissant form of combat to defeat it.

I perceived
Aniti and Juro as bright globes of white light beside me. It took
them a while to assume a definite shape - which was a manifestation
of their inexperience. I too had found it difficult to manipulate
my own form in the soulscape during my first scaping range. Sending
them a reassuring pulse of sympathetic thought, I concentrated on
our surroundings. For a moment or two, I extended my consciousness
outwards, hoping it would brush up against something suspicious,
some core of condensed matter. I found nothing. There were spots of
heat that suggested event-plays of some kind, but they held no
taint of Fear. If anything, they were concentrations of pleasure.
On an impulse, I changed tack, and advised the others to focus on
these areas of ecstasy instead of trying to locate pockets of Fear.
It was a gamble, and I disliked gambles in the soulscape, but we
had nothing else to go on.