Burying the Shadow (54 page)

‘Nonetheless,
what he said to you is true,’ Pahadron said gently. His smile too
was disturbingly gentle, considering the Harkasites’
reputation.

I directed a
chill glance in his direction. ‘If you would escort me back to my
father...’

He ignored my
rather obvious signals. ‘I am aware of your plans,’ he said.
‘Metatron has spoken to me. Lady Gimel, look at me.’

I had walked
past him. Reluctantly, I turned round.

‘I know what
you think of me, and do not dispute that opinion. But remember,
what might come through from Elenoen could destroy me with a
glance.’ He smiled. ‘Much as you are trying to do at this
moment!’

‘I have
nurtured the soulscaper!’ I said. ‘I have been preparing her for
many years. She is powerful! Sammael said so himself. It is
impossible for me to abandon her now.’

‘She cannot
possibly be powerful enough,’ Pahadron said. ‘If you love her - and
I feel you do - you must remove her from your plans.’

‘You are a
monster!’ I cried. ‘How can you advise me?’

‘I am a
conjunction,’ the Harkasite replied. ‘A composite, who has slept
for many years, but I have the memory of three separate lives. I
can still remember love, Lady Gimel, and what it does to you.’

His
reasonable, even-toned voice brought me to my senses a little. I
was appalled at how I had insulted him. Whatever my feelings, I
should not have voiced them so rudely. ‘Forgive me,’ I said. ‘I am
distressed.’

‘There is
nothing to forgive,’ he said. ‘I am all the things you despise,
after all. If I discovered you were a threat to eloimkind I would
kill you where you stand. And, should I be directed to dispose of
your soulscaper, I would do that too, without a qualm. Now do you
understand what I am trying to say to you?’

I had begun to
shiver. ‘Yes, I understand,’ I said, and began to walk away. He did
not follow me immediately.

Rayojini

‘
Turning our
tortures into horrid arms against the torturer…’

Paradise Lost,
Book II

Keea and I took a
carriage to Sacramante from a border town in Bochanegra. We had
walked far; a need to accelerate our quest for information provided
the only excuse we needed to squander funds on the luxury of
transport.

Once we
arrived in the city, I was concerned about having my Khaltish
currency changed into the Bochanegran coin, and our first
destination was the exchange office. The city was in the throes of
a late autumn festival and seemed to be full of Khalts, celebrating
like crazy. Because of this influx, there was a shortage of funds,
and we were told at the office that we would have to wait until
morning before my currency could be exchanged. Keea said he did not
have enough money to pay for my lodgings himself, which I did not
entirely believe. Perhaps he still harboured a grudge because of
the way I’d leapt on him in Ykhey. Neither of us had mentioned the
incident since. Still, if Keea was not prepared to be generous,
whatever his reasons, there was little I could do about it. The
only Bochanegran currency I possessed was the gold coin that had
been pressed into my hand at the gates of Ykhey by... whatever had
pressed it into my hand. I was reluctant to spend it, naturally,
but could see little other choice. Keea, I thought, ought to have
many friends in the city, perhaps even some we could stay with for
a couple of days, but now he claimed to hail from an outlying town
further south. He was familiar with few people in Sacramante, he
said, but did know of a lane near the atelier courts, which was
thronged with cheap and tolerable inns.

I let him lead
the way, even though he lost us once or twice down the twisting
alleys. In the morning, after I had cleaned myself up, I would seek
out the family I had visited with my mother as a girl and hope
they’d be prepared to assist me.

Eventually, we
found the lane he was looking for, called Aurora Paths. It was
narrow and picturesque, conveying an ambience of cultivated
simplicity, which must have been designed exclusively for tourists.
Women and youths in peasant dress were stationed ostentatiously at
tables outside on the lane itself, sipping dark red wines from
earthenware goblets. ‘So which one do you care to patronise,
Mistress Rayojini?’ Keea asked me. He looked tired.

‘You have no
preference, no recommendation?’

He shrugged.
‘They are doubtless all alike.’

I began to
walk up the lane, shifting my carryback into a slightly more
comfortable position, looking forward to the moment I could divest
myself of its weight. I looked at the names of the inns, and acted
on whim.

‘This’ll do,’
I said. ‘
The Temple Gate
. I like the lanterns outside. What
do you think?’

Again, a
shrug. ‘I don’t mind.’

It was near
dinnertime and
The Temple Gate
was quiet and empty, holding
its breath before its guests descended in evening finery to eat. A
thin young girl at the counter inscribed our names in a ledger,
asked for a nominal sum as security, and gawked at the coin when I
produced it from my pouch. ‘It is currency in this place, isn’t
it?’ I asked sharply.

The girl
nodded, round-eyed, and mumbled something about how she was unsure
whether she’d be able to give me change for it.

‘It’s all I
have,’ I said impatiently. ‘Can you accept it or not?’ Keea lounged
against the counter, happy to let me handle this problem alone. He
made no offer to pay for my accommodation himself.

‘I’ll have to
fetch my father,’ the counter girl told me. ‘He is the
proprietor.’

‘Please do!’ I
glanced at Keea who shrugged. ‘This is intolerable,’ I said. ‘What
is wrong with my money? How much
is
it worth, Keea? You must
know - you live here!’

‘I’m
unfamiliar with that particular coin,’ he said, unhelpfully.

The innkeeper
came out to the counter clutching my coin. ‘You do know how much
this worth,’ he said to me.

I made a
helpless gesture. ‘It was given to me as a gift,’ I said. ‘What is
it worth in dahli?’ Dahli were the standard coins in Sacramante.
When the innkeeper told me, the amount astounded me. I’d had no
idea I’d been presented with such riches. Ten thousand dahli! It
was very embarrassing. Both the innkeeper and his daughter looked
at me as if I was insane. I explained my position concerning the
exchange office, my ignorance regarding rarer Bochanegran currency,
and politely enquired whether or not we could come to an agreement
until I could visit the exchange office in the morning.

‘Madam, this
coin could keep you in our best suite, with every conceivable
luxury, for many years,’ the innkeeper said dryly. ‘I am sure we
can think of an arrangement that pleases us both.’ He was happy to
let me open an account with the inn from which I could draw out
funds as and when I needed them. Whatever remained in credit at the
end of my stay would be refunded.

‘I am a
soulscaper,’ I said airily. ‘The coin was payment for some work I
undertook. I had no idea it was so valuable.’

The innkeeper
smiled tolerantly. ‘Would that we could all be so flippant about
our income,’ he said.

Still, he was
impressed enough to show me up to my room personally. He hadn’t
asked me whether I wanted one of the best rooms, but had evidently
given me one anyway. It was spacious and airy, with a huge bed, a
balcony and adjoining toilet room. I’d also offered to pay for
similar accommodation for Keea, which he had accepted blithely.
Well
, I thought,
since the money was unexpected, I might
as well just spend it.

‘Would you
like a maid to bathe you?’ the innkeeper asked me.

‘Why not,’ I
said, ‘and a light meal would be appreciated too, if you could
oblige.’

‘Anything you
require.’ He saluted me respectfully and left the room.

I smiled to
myself and sat down on the bed, gratefully unbuckling my carryback.
I could get used to this treatment. After a few moments of basking
luxuriously in my unexpected good fortune, I got to my feet, opened
the long windows and walked out onto the balcony. In the distance,
I could see the silver wrinkle of the sea and the tall masts in
harbour. Late-flowering vines, growing thickly on the wall outside,
exuded a delightful perfume that brought back all the memories of
my previous visit to this city. A flicker of excitement filled my
veins; I closed my eyes and visualised the torch-lit night of our
excursion to the theatre: the colours, the perfumes, the radiant
people. Gimel and Beth Metatronim. I opened my eyes, and already
the light had faded towards evening. Between the trees below,
firefly lights illumined the patios of the
tavernas
and
cafes. I curled my fingers over the balcony rail. Gimel and Beth
lived in this city; could I bear to seek them out? Perhaps it would
be sensible. Perhaps, by seeing them in the flesh, I would exorcise
the ghosts their images had conjured in my mind. By now, they would
have lost their beauty; they would be ageing and sagging. I
imagined tracking them down and telling them how they had affected
me all those years ago. And yet, perhaps that confession would only
bore them. It was likely that many people had been affected by them
in a similar way; dreaming of celebrities, dreaming of touching
them and possessing their bodies for a night. I was probably no
different from their other admirers.

There was a
knock on the door behind me and I went back into the room. The maid
had arrived to scrub my back for me. She went into the adjoining
room and began to run me a bath. Hot water, plumbed in; I would
bathe every day to take advantage of this luxury.

As the girl
patiently massaged my grubby flesh, I relaxed sleepily in the warm
water. Anxieties seemed to flow away from me along with the dirt
from my skin. Suddenly the whole business of the Host and the
phenomena in Khalt seemed unreal, or the product of hysteria. What
had happened to me out there on the road? Too much time spent
alone? Too much imagination? Here, in the relaxed atmosphere of
Sacramante, all my wild assertions of conspiracy theories, ancient
predatory races and the walking dead seemed absurd. Perhaps the
conspiracy existed only because I had invented it. Perhaps I should
forget about it now. Tomorrow, I would seek employment and put
aside my questing instincts for a while. Following this path of
intrigues and mysteries was only making me ill and despondent; I
was getting too old for such adventure. If I got the chance, I
would track down other soulscapers in the city, for there were
bound to be a few around, and ask them to purify my mind of dross.
I would relax and let the balmy air of Sacramante seep into my
bones; heal myself. Still, I did not forget the libraries Keea had
told me about. It would be senseless to have come this far and not
at least take a look at them. However, I instructed myself firmly
that, whatever I might discover in the libraries, I would do
nothing but return to Taparak and report back to the scryers. If
there were problems to be solved, it was up to the Guild to do
something about it, not me.

It is astounding how,
when in the womblike embrace of warm water, we can fool ourselves
that we can still be children.

I opted to eat
in my room that night, wrapped in a robe the inn provided for my
use. I felt optimistic and lazy; the image of such demons as
bloodsuckers or legendary beings remained properly in the
Strangeling. They had no place here.

I napped for a
while and awoke with the room full of moonlight, a small lamp by my
couch barely alight. Hungry again, I decided to venture downstairs
and perhaps take a drink in the taproom. All of my clothes bore the
stains of travel and I had had no opportunity to wash them, so I
dressed myself as best I could in a simple dark green shift I kept
for those rare occasions when it is preferable to appear at least
nominally groomed. It was badly creased and had a mould-stain on
the right shoulder, which had undoubtedly grown while I’d been kept
unavoidably wet in Khalt. Rubbing the stain with a damp cloth made
no difference, but perhaps it would go unnoticed anyway if the
lighting were dim. My braids looked a little wild, so I damped the
frizzy bits down and tied a scarf over my head. The mirror told me
I looked as if I’d been recently disinterred, but it would have to
do. Tomorrow, I could go and spend more of my gift money on some
new clothes.

As I went into
the corridor, the door to a room further down clicked open. A
figure stepped out into the dimly lit passage, looked up and down
swiftly, but apparently did not see me. They hurried for the stairs
in a whirl of dark cloak. I felt as if my heart had stopped. The
instant I had seen the face, I had known it. I was sure it was the
same man/woman who had accosted me at the gates of Ykhey. Was that
possible?
No, it was your imagination
, I tried to tell
myself, not believing it for a moment. The movements had been
furtive - whose room had they been in? The answer was obvious to
me: Keea’s. As to whether Keea had welcomed this person as a
friend, or had been attacked by them as an enemy, I would have to
find out.

I advanced
silently to the door, which still stood ajar, wondering whether I
should enter or not. With my fingertips, I pushed the door wide.
Inside, light from a shaded lantern threw multiple colours over the
wide bed. It was empty, and there was no sign of any personal
belongings lying around. Was this Keea’s room? Perhaps I’d been
mistaken and the mysterious figure had been nothing but another
guest on his way out for a night’s entertainment. If I made further
investigation of the room, I might well be trespassing. I pulled
the door shut and thoughtfully went downstairs.

The following
day, I rose early and left instructions with the maid for my
clothes to be cleaned. She’d come to my room to see if I needed
anything. Later, I would go out and treat myself to some new
apparel.