Burying the Shadow (45 page)

Much as I
itched to take some kind of action, I had to concur with much of
what Keea had said. One woman and one boy would have little defence
against attack, especially in unknown territory where we had no
safe boltholes. Still, if we came across a lone rider, I would
definitely try and speak to them. If Keea was so worried about the
idea of that, he could hide while I was doing it! ‘Well, perhaps
you are right,’ I said, making a great show of how grudgingly I
spoke the words.

Keea seemed
relieved. I smiled to myself and adjusted my carryback.

As we walked
on in silence, I wondered about what I should do when we reached
Sacramante. Before I could continue my investigations there, I
would have to sort out how I was going to support myself. Lodgings
were expensive in the city; I might need to find work for a while.
Somehow, I would have to persuade Keea to introduce me to his
employers, and also to show me the libraries he had spoken of. In
view of his recent behaviour I would not be surprised if, once we
reached the city, he abandoned me.

I realised I
might need patronage while I was in Sacramante, which prompted me
to think about the Tricantes. Could I seek sanction from them after
all this time? The Sacramantans were generous when it came to
people they considered to be artisans of one form or another.
Luckily, soulscapers were included in this category. Seeking work
in Sacramante was regarded with a narrow eye in Taparak, mainly
because, despite the Bochanegran wealth we could take back to the
table mountain, any time spent in Sacramante was nothing more than
a holiday; work was incidental. Soulscapers had a tendency to
linger there spending their earnings long after their commissions
were finished. Also, as in Atruriey, Sacramantans rarely succumbed
to the Fear. It was difficult for the Tappish to work out why this
was so, but then we did not really know what caused the Fear in the
first place. Any attempt to study the Sacramantans was politely but
firmly discouraged. A friend had once said to me that the
Sacramantans went out of their way to addle visiting soulscapers
with liquor, just to prevent any covert examination. I tried to
remember whether this had been so when Ushas and I had been there.
Still, unless commissioned, a soulscaper had to look really hard to
find work in Sacramante, although the Bochanegrans would heap a
person with rewards for the most trivial of tasks. On one occasion,
so it is recorded, a soulscaper did nothing more than supervise the
delivery of a litter of kittens from a favourite cat, yet she
received more payment than one could expect from healing the son of
a royal house of Lansaal. It was only a legend, perhaps.

More
immediately, I would have to concern myself with trying to track
down a member of the Host. The Strangeling was a narrow country,
and we would cross it swiftly. Should I ignore Keea’s forebodings
and linger here, take time to explore? I wondered whether my
assumptions about the Host were correct. Had I merely dreamed up an
improbable solution to the puzzle, which was only the product of a
lively imagination? I felt Keea wanted me to think that. Still,
there was no point in rushing to conclusions; I must wait and
observe.

By mid-day, we
had left the farmland behind, and came to a place where overgrown
ruins stretched to either side of us - perhaps the suburbs of an
ancient city. The road was lined by tall columns, many of which
were broken, supporting statues of various gods or important
personages. I thought I recognised some of the gods from the
soulscape. With little concentration, I fancied I could detect the
images of ancient chariots that had once thundered up and down this
highway. Clustering between the magnificent columns, and close to
the road itself, were ramshackle dwellings, constructed of rag and
wood and other, less easily identifiable, materials. This was a
tableau rich in symbolism; past glory, present abjection. As we
progressed along the road, the community that flanked it woke up
and surged out into the day. They were the poorest, grubbiest
people I had ever seen, and yet, despite their obvious poverty,
they were not at all melancholy or apathetic. They burgeoned like a
colony of ants in the gargantuan skeleton of the past, sifting
rubbish, recycling everything, conjuring a new art from the bones.
We discovered that, unlike the retiring inhabitants of the
vine-clad town, they were very gregarious folk. A few individuals
attached themselves to us and followed us, offering various wares;
fortune-telling services, a map to buried relics, a tour of the
ghosts of the area and, quite often, cooked meat. All of these
delights, we prudently declined to accept, which the people took in
good part, merely thinking up grander temptations to offer us
instead.

Isis’
prediction concerning the distance we would have to travel to reach
Ykhey was indeed accurate. By late afternoon, we were approaching
the city walls; more remained of them than I would have thought
possible. Perhaps they had been repaired over the years. Ykhey was
a colossal place. It would take us at least another day to cross
its ruins. The highway too was in better repair near the city.
People dressed in tarnished silks rode mules up and down it,
throwing coins to the most persistent of the hut dwellers who had
followed us this far. It seemed obvious that Ykhey had some kind of
social structure. It must also be a rich area for lucky finds,
because many of the natives carried unbelievable treasures. I saw
women wearing great golden crowns that were thick, in a rude,
abundant way, with crudely cut gems. I saw children dressed in
gaily-coloured rags weighed down with heavy chains of gold around
their necks, their skinny arms sleeved in glittering bangles.
People displayed these filched riches without shame, and seemingly
without fear of theft. Perhaps there was so much of this forgotten
treasure lying around for anyone to pick up, no-one
had
to
steal, but it did make me wonder why merchant trains from the east
had not come to claim some of this booty which could be sold for
high profit beyond Khalt.

My amazement
caused me to break my silence with Keea. ‘Just look at all this
stuff!’ I exclaimed. ‘Why is it still here?’

‘This is the
soulscape of the past,’ he replied. ‘Remember that. It is only the
ghost of a consensual archetype.’

‘Of course!’ I
said. I was impatient with his ridiculous attempt to utilise my own
terminology, and could not be bothered to argue with him. If what
Isis had said was correct, this had once been the Holy City of the
Host. I stared up at the walls as we approached; they were covered
in carvings, in a style that again suggested Deltan influence. Now,
however, I wondered if perhaps this was not the art that had
originally inspired the Deltans, rather than vice versa.

The road led
right through a massive gateway. There were no longer any gates
attached, but it was unlikely these people had a need for them
anyway. Would I recognise a member of the Host if I saw one? As we
walked under the great arch, a crowd of women and boys, dressed in
stained and ragged silks, with bangles of gold around their ankles
and wrists, came running out from the shadows in a twittering
crowd. They banged tambourines and whirled around us, offering us
delights of the flesh and the inevitable telling of fortunes. I
felt heady in the swirl of colour; skirts of deep red, emerald
green, peacock blue, the glint of yellow metal. Quick hands brushed
our faces, and a blur of white-toothed smiles flashed around us. I
couldn’t help laughing aloud, batting these flapping creatures away
from me. They were like soulscape harpies in plumage of silk, who
might carry us off to a final and exquisite devouring. And
then...

I noticed a still face
in the maelstrom of activity; a white-skinned face, that did not
smile. Shadow eyes. A veil about the head. I felt suddenly cold.
The whirling corybantic dancers became mere phantoms in the aura of
this motionless figure, this
other
woman. Her body was
wrapped in a thick, dark cloak; only her face was visible. As if
she’d been waiting for me to notice her, she came towards me, this
true harpy-woman; her white face expressionless. I felt that the
dancers could not see her; they swirled around her, reeling away as
if she was protected by an invisible force from which solid matter
simply bounced off. When she was only a couple of feet away from
me, she smiled gently. Never, in all my dreams, in all my childhood
fantasies, had I seen her this clearly. She was my
guardian-pursuer; still wearing the image of the Sacramantan
actress, Gimel Metatronim. I studied her beautiful features. No,
this was a real person; she was not an image, not a ghost, not a
fantasy. She could not actually
be
Gimel Metatronim, because
she was too young. It had been nearly twenty years since I’d been
in Sacramante with my mother; Gimel must be in her late forties by
now, surely. Could this woman be one of the people I was looking
for - a member of the Host? After all, I suspected they had the
ability to influence thought. Perhaps she had picked the image of
my guardian-pursuer out of my mind. She did not speak, but simply
stood there before me, smiling sweetly.

‘Who
are
you?’ I asked.

She shook her
head, lowered it, and when she looked up again, I realised she did
not look like my guardian-pursuer at all. I had been mistaken. The
figure was male. It had a male face that I did not recognise, but
it was exquisitely handsome. Long, dark hair coiled out from
beneath the hood of his cloak. His lips, perfectly sculpted, were
as pale as his cheeks. His eyes were silvery-grey and shone with
their own light. I reached out to touch him, fearing he would
vanish at any moment. He caught hold of my hands before I could
grab his cloak. He shook his head, and pressed something into my
palm, closing my fingers over it. His hands were icy cold. Then he
turned and strode into the city. The gaudy dancers spilled into the
void he had left behind him, obscuring my sight. I jumped up a
little to look over their heads, but could not find the man.

It had all
happened in an instant. Had I imagined it? No. There was tangible
evidence.

I opened my
hand, which had clenched convulsively around whatever had been
placed there. I examined the gift, and found it was a perfect,
newly minted Sacramantan coin, bearing the noble profile of the
Kaliph Izobella. I looked around for Keea, supposing he had
witnessed what had happened, but there was no sign of him. He had
vanished too.

I was
momentarily stunned, and couldn’t decide what to do. An odd feeling
was creeping round me; nothing seemed entirely real. At that
moment, I did not want to be alone among Strangeling natives. Where
had Keea gone? Had he left me for good? I wondered whether one of
the dancers had taken him away, and attempted to question them.
They giggled at my enquiries, shaking their heads, grabbing hold of
my hands and whirling me round in their midst. My voice simply blew
away from me.

‘Dance,’ they
said, ‘dance with us!’ Their lilting laughter sounded like crazy
birds and rippling water; rising and falling.

My head had
begun to throb with a dull pain, and my vision seemed somehow
faded. Colours blended like wet paint before my eyes. I was dizzy,
thrown from person to person in the crowd; hands caught me and
pushed me away. I struggled to pass through them.

‘Dance!
Dance!’

After what seemed an
hour of disorientating scrabbling, I managed to claw my way through
the leaping bodies, and stumbled into the city beyond them. The
dancers swarmed off down the highway, spinning, leaping, calling
out. I shook my head and adjusted my carryback, swaying on my feet
for a few moments, to get my bearings. My head felt as if it had
been severely kicked; I realised I’d been influenced in some way,
perhaps weakened. No more of this!

Summoning a
shred of resolve and strength, I walked away from the gateway. The
streets beyond were full of milling people, all calling out to each
other. There was music everywhere. No one seemed to be doing
anything but drinking and dancing. I thought I saw a donkey walking
on its hind legs, wearing a crown of roses, but then, blinking,
realised it was only a man wearing a donkey mask. A beautiful woman
in a yellow dress paused in front of me, and her face aged to
withered ruin in seconds. Then, she smiled and was a girl again.
She threw a handful of petals over my hat. I would have to find
somewhere to rest, because my mind was clearly suffering from
delusions. I was sure the man at the city gates had been a member
of Host, and that he’d deliberately affected my consciousness. Why?
Was I getting too close to the truth? But how had he known who I
was? Had Isis Urania sent word ahead, or was Keea responsible? He
had
vanished. Was I being warned away from my
investigations? Questions tumbled through my whirling head. I felt
thirsty and sore, sweating heavily beneath my carryback.

A child of
indeterminate sex skipped up to me, holding out a metal goblet.
‘Drink, lady, drink,’ it said.

‘What is
it?’

‘The vine
gift.’

‘How much does
it cost?’

The child looked
blank. ‘Drink,’ it said, again. ‘It is the vine gift.’

I took the
cup, and peered into it. A dark, pungent liquid filled it to the
brim, its surface foaming as if it had only recently been poured.
It smelled like wine. Without consideration of personal health, I
found I had raised the cup to my lips and was drinking from it
greedily. This must be a dream! I would never do such a rash thing!
And yet, some inner part of me was convinced it wasn’t poisoned.
Almost immediately, a warm, alcoholic glow began to steal around my
body. I entered a floating, relaxed state, and the ache in my head
subsided abruptly. Still, I was in no condition to be walking
around. I gave the cup back to the child with a murmur of thanks,
and said, ’Can you find me a place to rest a while?’