Burying the Shadow (44 page)

I suspected
she only wanted food from us, but was prepared to go along with her
claim. ‘What wisdom can you give us, mother?’ I asked
cheerfully.

‘More’n the
dead can,’ she said sharply, and I shivered involuntarily.

‘The dead can
be quite informative,’ Keea said reasonably, spitting the last of
our meat. I noticed he had cut the meat into three strips; a fact
which I’m sure did not escape the old woman either.

The woman
nodded. ‘Aye, boy, you’re clear-seein’, it’s true!’ She shuffled
towards me and held out a begrimed hand, thick with rings, all of
which were crusty and seemed to have become part of her flesh. I
squeezed it briefly. At close quarters, the woman smelled
undeniably rank.

‘I am Isis
Urania,’ she said, nodding. ‘I suppose you know me.’

‘Well, I think
I may have heard of you,’ I replied, catching Keea’s eye and
smiling. Isis and Urania were the names of old goddesses from two
very different cultures.

‘Most have,
most have,’ the hag said, shaking her head and sighing deeply. ‘I
yearn for privacy, but they won’t let me be. It’s my hands, you
see, and my eyes. They’re needed.’ Fame was clearly a great burden
to her.

‘You have
sons, don’t you?’ Keea said sweetly. ‘Are they well?’

Isis pulled a
frown. ‘Yes. Apollo and Loki, my little devils!’ She waved a finger
at Keea and said to me, brightly, ‘Sons are always a problem,
aren’t they!’

Keea snorted a
laugh.

‘I wouldn’t
know, I’m afraid,’ I said, more offended than I would have liked to
be. ‘I have no children.’ The journey must really have taken it out
of me! The fact that Keea and I had very different skin colours
seemed to have escaped the hag.

‘You are a
lucky woman, then,’ she said, and sat down on a rock between us.
‘Well, I have news for you people!’ She slapped her parted thighs,
between which the remains of a long, turquoise robe hung in rags.
‘The Knights are abroad, riding the roads of Khalt in their cloaks
and hats. Fearsome, eh? But you’ve nought to fear from ‘em. Good
boys, good boys, eyes like sun-hawks’ eyes. Get me?’ She tapped my
knee with bunched knuckles. ‘Don’t have to be afraid of the pretty
one, my dear. She won’t hurt you. Neither will he.’

‘What do you
mean?’ I asked. ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand you.’

Isis tutted
and rolled her eyes. ‘She’s not a nightmare, she’s a dream, a
dream!’ she exclaimed and then, rubbing her hands together, licked
her lips and said, ‘Meat’s about ready, sonny. Hand her over. Like
it rare, I do.’

The old woman
seemed to think we all shared some deeply interesting secret. Her
words implied she knew something of what we’d seen on the road, but
I was prepared to dismiss this as coincidence. So many strange
things were happening in Khalt, it was likely Isis had picked up
information from other travellers who’d had similar experiences to
our own.

Isis had
finished gobbling her meat by the time Keea and I were ready to eat
ours. She exhibited no interest in the wild salad Keea offered her.
Admittedly, it was rather limp. ‘You’re only a day’s hike from
Ykhey,’ Isis said, nodding, and licking grease from her chin. ‘Used
to be Ykhey, anyways, the Holy City, it was. Now...’ She shrugged.
‘Some call it Taynah; a place of terrible destruction. You are
going to Ykhey!’

‘Are we?’ I
raised my eyebrows at Keea in inquiry.

He shrugged.
‘It is in the west. We will be heading that way.’

I felt quite
sure that, despite his denial, he had been here before. Had it been
a lucky guess that Isis had sons? Isis the goddess had them, of
course. Or was Isis Urania someone he knew, or had at least met
before? I watched him as he sat beside the fire, listening to the
old woman’s prattle. He was smiling in that particularly irritating
way, which usually signified - to me anyway - he was nursing
secrets. I realised that if I believed I had come to know him, I
was wrong.

‘So,’ I said,
offering Isis the fat off my meat, which she accepted greedily.
‘What can you tell us that the dead can’t? And who is the pretty
one you referred to who won’t hurt me?’

Isis squinted
at me. ‘Concerning your first question, lady, you have asked the
wrong one. As for the second, she is the person you fear and love,
whose image you carry in your thoughts.’

‘I see... May
I reword my first question?’

Isis inclined
her head. ‘You have only to ask.’

‘What is it
that causes the dead to walk around? Are they really dead?’

Isis cackled.
‘They walk to seek oblivion. They are dead in one sense, but not in
another. They have been partially supped.’

‘Partially
supped? What do you mean?’

‘The host
treats them cruelly now, very cruel.’ She shook her head sadly.

‘The Host of
Helat? Is that who you mean? What are they?’

She extended
her arms. ‘This was theirs; all this. We took it away from
them.’

‘The Host of
Helat lived in the Strangeling? I have seen paintings of these
people in a temple on the Kahra Flats. The pictures seemed to
indicate all the Host were destroyed.’

‘No, not
destroyed.’ Isis tapped her beaky nose. ‘There is the Host, and
there is the Host, and there is yet another Host not of this world.
It is very perplexin’.’

I touched her
arm and spoke gently. ‘Can you explain it to me? It’s really
important that I understand.’

‘She has to
know
everything
,’ Keea drawled and grinned at me. ‘Don’t
you, Rayo?’

I ignored him, and
then recounted my thoughts upon everything I had so far
encountered. Isis listened carefully. ‘The nomads of Khalt worship
Helat and have legends concerning the Host, who instigate the Holy
Death. There are pictorial records in the Sink, which show the Host
being born and then mingling with humanity; teaching them and
preying off them. That could be a metaphor for a race arriving on
this continent from somewhere else; a race with strange ways of
behaviour, to say the least, but who were very intelligent, far
more advanced than the ancient Khalts. Now, Isis, you’re telling me
that the Strangeling was their country. They were real people, and
they were nearly destroyed. Because of the way they preyed?’

Isis nodded,
eyes narrowed. ‘People got the knowledge they needed and then
turned on the Host. But they couldn’t kill the light of ‘em, oh no,
couldn’t do it. Always glowin’, always, like the sky, see?’

I was
beginning to feel excited, similar to how I felt when I
successfully identified a soulscape problem. It might be that the
answer to the mystery was a simple one - unlikely, but simple.
‘Isis, you mentioned that the walking dead are - what was it? - oh,
yes, “partially supped”. By that, do you mean the Host have preyed
on them, but not killed them?’

Isis put back
her head and glared at me down her nose, her eyes nearly closed. I
could see the wet gleam between her wrinkled lids. ‘Supped,
violated, but not to death. They can make all manner of things
happen.’

‘So it’s the
Host causing the phenomena in Khalt then!’ I cried ‘Is that right
Isis? Is it?’

Isis looked
almost frightened by my urgency. She shrugged. ‘Can make all manner
of things happen,’ she repeated.

‘But why
now
?’ I asked, addressing Keea. ‘The Strangeling has existed
for centuries, if not far longer. Why should these people begin
appearing again
now
? That is the puzzle!’

Keea’s face
was devoid of expression.

‘This could be
it, Keea! Don’t you see? It makes sense, doesn’t it? Survivors of
this ancient race might have been hiding here in the Strangeling.
Now, for whatever reason, it’s possible they’ve become active
beyond the boundary. All I have to discover is
how
they do
the things they do. They must have an ability to direct human will
power and thought; a very strong ability. But it’s not impossible.
It
is
an answer. Why have they hidden themselves for so
long? Keea, we have to find one of these Host people!’ I turned
excitedly to Isis. ’Will I find any here in the Strangeling? If so,
where?’

‘If they want
you to find them, they’ll find you,’ Isis replied, rather
stiffly.

I was
jubilant. Q’orveh and his people had been nearer the truth than I
had given them credit for. If only I hadn’t been so scathing of
their legends. Perhaps I could have learned more from them than I
thought. Another idea came to me.

‘Isis, the
riders on the road, the ones you called the Knights. Are they
members of the Host?’

‘They are
creatures of the Host,’ Isis said.

Then I had
already met one! This was incredible. Maybe these ‘Knights’ were
the ones precipitating all the strange events. I patted the old
woman’s hand warmly. ‘You have given me more than I could have
wished for. Thank you for your wisdom.’

She inclined
her head in a regal manner. ‘Your meat was very good,’ she said.
‘Thank you. Now, no more talking, I must leave you.’

Before I could
protest, she stood up, made a hurried genuflection of blessing in
our direction, advised us to bind the inside of our boots with vine
leaves to repel ‘earth sniffers’, and wished us the luck of the
gods. Then, she vanished quickly through the root fronds.

‘Well?’ I said
to Keea, triumphantly.

‘I expect
there are many like her in this place,’ he said. ’Don’t you? Quite
mad.’

‘Mad? Don’t be
ridiculous! She told us some amazingly useful information.’ I had a
feeling Keea was annoyed Isis had spoken to me, but then he hadn’t
tried to silence her either.

‘She’s a
seeress,’ he said, caustically. ‘Or perhaps even a goddess,
although I don’t think a goddess would be so careless about her
appearance, do you?’

‘Keea, she
knew about me! It was as if she knew what I wanted to hear.’

He shrugged in
an intensely irritating manner. ‘Precisely. Think about it, Rayo.
The woman can obviously read ethers and auras. She could have
picked up the information from your own mind.’

I snorted
sarcastically. ‘Oh please! I don’t believe anyone can be so adept
at reading minds without the benefit of a scry-fume. She’s just an
old vagabond, senile.’

Keea sighed,
rolling his eyes in what looked like exasperated patience. ‘She
didn’t tell you anything, Rayo, think about it. You perhaps told
her all she needed to know, rather than the other way around.’

‘You are being
deliberately disparaging!’

‘You are a
very vain woman, Rayojini! Why do you think I spend my entire time
thinking up conundrums to perplex you? I have better things to
think about.’

‘Such as?’

He
shrugged.

‘What is going
on in your head, Keea?’ I asked. ‘My deductions have not impressed
you at all, which only leads me to think that you know everything
already.’

Keea opened
his mouth to speak, but suddenly a horse snorted right behind us.
Keea turned round quickly. Without waiting for him, I leapt up and
fought my way through the concealing root-fronds. I ran out into
the rubble-strewn street. A horse! A Knight! But there was nothing
there.

Disappointed,
I went back to the fire, and discovered that Keea had gone into his
tent and tied the flaps tightly against me. For a while, I wrapped
myself in a blanket and sat next to the dying embers. In the
distance, I could hear singing, faint music. It sounded like people
welcoming in a harvest. Eventually, with images and ideas swirling
round my brain, I slept where I was sitting.

Rayojini

‘…
then bursting
forth afresh with conscious terrors vex me round, that rest or
intermission none I find.’

Paradise Lost,
Book II

I was deliberately
silent with Keea the next morning. He made no effort to cajole me.
After we had eaten and packed away our things, we started walking
towards the west once more. We found the wide road we had followed,
and walked away from the town of vines and ferns. We did not see
any sign of life, although it was not long past dawn, so perhaps no
one was awake at that hour. I was feeling stiff and disagreeable,
haunted by a dream I had had about my mother. She had expressed
disappointment in me.

‘You walked
right past the answers,’ she’d said. ‘You wasted your
opportunities.’

In my dreams, I was
whipping myself for not having worked out the puzzle sooner. One
thing was certain; I’d have to try and gather more evidence of the
existence of the Host before I could present my theories to the
guild leaders in Taparak. This eventually prompted me to break the
silence with Keea.

‘So where do
we begin looking?’ I asked him.

He pretended
he’d been deep in thought, and took a few seconds to answer me.
‘Looking for what?’ he said. We’d left the ruined town and now
walked along a stretch of road that was flanked by fields of corn,
which had run wild. Large villa-farms could be seen in the valleys
beyond. They were some distance from the road, but as it had been
built on a raised embankment, we were able to see for quite a
way.

‘The Host,’ I
said.

Keea gave me a
hard look. ‘Are you serious?’ His voice was thorned with
sarcasm.

‘Of course.
The next time we catch sight of one of those Knight people, we’re
going to confront them.’

‘We?’ He
laughed. ‘You’re crazy! You’ll get yourself killed! Look what
happened last time you spoke to one of those creatures.’

‘They are not
creatures, Keea,’ I said pompously. ‘They are men. Calling them
creatures merely assists them to intimidate you. I have more
information about them now, so therefore feel better equipped to
deal with them.’

‘I can’t stop
you doing anything,’ Keea said, ‘but would still advise you to
consult the libraries in Sacramante first. I don’t think you - or I
- have enough information yet to go barging in and asking questions
around here. If your theories, and Isis’ information, are correct,
we could be running the risk of offending some very dangerous
characters.’