Burying the Shadow (66 page)

‘What business
do you have with them?’ he asked.

‘With who?’ I
snapped.

‘The
artisans.’

‘What makes
you think I have business with them?’

‘Because that
woman keeps coming here asking for you.’ he said. ‘She is standing
in the hall now. Looks like she’s waiting for you.’

Without
responding, I leapt away from the bar and charged out into the
hall, just as the main door was swinging shut. ‘No!’ I cried and
yanked it open again. People seemed to surge against me like a tide
of imbeciles, but, for a fleeting moment, I caught a glance of a
white face, of a tall woman who looked at me above the milling
heads. The impression was muddy, as if seen through water, but I
was sure it was Gimel. She wore a long purple cloak, with a hood,
which was pulled up over her head. She stared at me for only a
moment, before turning round and sweeping off down the alley. I did
not bother to shout after her. People complained as I pushed them
aside, but I paid no attention. I fixed my sights on the tall
figure ahead of me; this time, she would not get away.

Gimel

‘
He above the rest
in shape and gesture proudly eminent stood like a tower; his form
had not yet lost all her original brightness, nor appeared less
than Archangel ruined…’

Paradise Lost,
Book I

After a light lunch of
blood and lemon juice, I waited impatiently for Avirzah’e to bring
Rayojini to my house. I’d tried on at least a dozen different
gowns, consulting Tamaris as to which would be the most appropriate
for the occasion. The red was too busy -looking for afternoon wear,
but it flattered my figure, and the indigo was too fussy with beads
and embroidery.

‘Why not go
for the black, madam,’ Tamaris said, holding out the folds of
crepe.

‘Yes, yes,
simple... but perhaps a little too sinister?’

‘Not if you
wear your gold collar with it.’

‘Yes, good
idea... and a pale gold shadow on my eyelids.’

Finally, I
made my entrance into the salon, where Beth was waiting for me. ‘No
word from Avirzah’e?’ I asked, glancing at the clock on the
wall.

Beth shook his head. I
then spent over an hour pacing up and down, nearly wearing a hole
in the carpet. Beth watched me silently from one of the couches. He
did not seem as keen to meet Rayojini as I was, and I had a feeling
he was only there because Avirzah’e had insisted he should come.
His reticence was only to be expected, of course. I had always
harboured a greater interest in Rayojini than he had. He barely
showed any interest when Tamaris delivered a note that one of the
atelier court gatekeepers had been asked to give to me. I opened
the envelope with nerveless fingers. It was from Rayojini herself!
She sounded rather disturbed, and had she forgotten Avirzah’e was
collecting her this afternoon? It was very odd, but oh how
wonderful that we were communicating in reality so freely. A
letter! The first direct acknowledgement of our connection. I sent
Tamaris out to
The Temple Gate
to find out what was going
on, but Avirzah’e turned up before she got back. When he arrived,
he was alone.

‘She’s gone,’
Avirzah’e said.

‘Gone? Where?’
I was confused. In her short letter, Rayojini had asked me to go to
her at
The Temple Gate
, as if she planned to wait for me
there. It didn’t make sense. How could she have gone?

‘She did not
tell anyone where she was going,’ Avirzah’e said. ‘The innkeeper
told me she asked for money, and for her room to be kept for her.
He said a woman came for her. An artisan.’

‘What?’ I went
utterly cold. Who else of my people had an interest in Rayojini? “I
am surrounded by fanatics,” she had written. Who?

‘She spoke of
being followed!’ Avirzah’e said, slamming a fist into his other,
open palm. ‘I should have paid more attention to that!’

‘But who was
it?’ I cried. ‘Who?’

Avirzah’e shook his
head. ‘I’ve no idea. I wish I had. What are we going to do?’

‘We mustn’t
panic,’ I said, wanting more than anything to panic. ‘We must sit
down together and trust that our combined strength will be able to
trace her by projection.’

Avirzah’e
sighed and nodded. ‘Yes, yes, you’re right.’

‘Where is
Amelakiveh?’ Beth asked. ‘Why wasn’t he with her?’

The answer to
that last question was soon provided. Before we could arrange
ourselves to begin the search for Rayojini, an officer of the
Judificator arrived at our door, politely requesting either Beth or
myself to accompany him to the nearest judicial building. He said
he did not want to perturb Metatron unduly, which was why he had
come to us first, but something rather worrying had occurred.
Intrigued, and suffused with more than a little dread, Beth and
myself left Avirzah’e asking himself unanswerable questions in the
salon, and accompanied the officer to his headquarters. It
transpired that a young man had been found wandering the tourist
quarter, in a state of semi-consciousness and great distress. He
had been wearing Metatron’s seal ring, and was carrying several of
my personal effects, which was how he’d been traced to us.

‘We realised
it must be a servant of yours,’ the officer said, with some
embarrassment. ‘You had better prepare yourself for
unpleasantness.’ Beth and I hung onto each other in numb
apprehension as we followed the officer to the room where our
supposed servant was confined.

It was
Amelakiveh, though barely recognisable as such. When we saw him, we
were faced with a stranger in a familiar body, but even the body
had somehow shrunk. The face, once so beautiful, was that of a
vacant dullard. The skin was sallow, lustreless, the hair lank
about the shoulders. He strongly resembled an unfortunate who had
been imprudently over-supped. He had soiled himself. It was a
dreadful sight. I could not bring myself to go and comfort him.
Beth turned away with a sound of disgust.

We had to
confirm to the official that this was indeed a dependant of ours.
Though apparently dazed, Amelakiveh could speak. When questioned,
his last memory was of preparing himself to become a holy sacrifice
in the court of the Kaliph. Since that time, he had simply not
existed. Now, he did not know where he was or what had happened to
him. He had simply found himself in the middle of the city, with no
idea how he had got there. His name, he said, was Tavaro Arezza. He
had been reared for the Holy Sacrifice, and could remember the
names of all his sacrificial companions from that fateful night
when Beth and I had spoken to the Parzupheim. He did not appear to
recognise either Beth or myself, and had never even heard of the
soulscaper, Rayojini.

I knew, even
before I discussed it with my brother, that the person who, over
the last twenty odd years, had lived with us, shared our bed, and
carried out work in our name, was not the pathetic creature now
before us. This pathetic creature was, indisputably, the rightful
owner of its body, but the personality we were familiar with had
vacated that body utterly. All that remained was the shreds of an
individual whose soul had been partially supped from their body.
The Holy Sacrifice involves more than the drinking of blood.

The
implications were enormous, terrible. I felt nauseous; remembering
his kiss, the way Kiveh had slipped my father’s ring from my hand.
No, not Kiveh, but who?

‘I think,’
Beth said, ‘we will find it is the same person who spirited
Rayojini away from the inn, don’t you?’

I gazed at him
in horror. ‘Sammael,’ I said. ‘We have to tell Sammael.’

My Rayojini
was in terrible danger, I was sure of it. How could we have been so
easily fooled?

Out of pity, and a
sense of responsibility, I told the officials that Tavaro Arezza,
or what was left of him, could be taken to our home, where Tamaris
and Ramiz would look after him. I doubted whether he had much of a
future, but it was the least we could do for him. However, the
condition of the Arezza boy was the last thing we could worry about
at the present moment. All the way home, Beth and I sat in stony
silence in the carriage; both of us, I am sure, mentally whipping
ourselves in shame and fury. Rayojini’s quirky little note became
tragic in my mind. “I am surrounded by fanatics”. They had taken
her! We had commended her into the care of an enemy, an enemy who
had been constantly by her side throughout Khalt and the
Strangeling. It was unspeakable! How could we have been so blind?
The signs had been there all along. No human ever resists the holy
sacrifice; we should have known Amelakiveh was no ordinary boy. And
I had been the one who’d chosen him from all the other offerings.
It was my fault. I did not say these words aloud, but Beth knew my
thoughts all the same.

‘Don’t blame
yourself,’ he said. ‘There was no way either of us could have
anticipated this.’

‘I feel so
soiled,’ I said. I was turning Metatron’s ring in my hands. I could
not bear to put it on my finger.

Beth pulled me
against him. ‘Well, it’s only a guess, but I suspect the influence
from Elenoen that Sammael told you about now has your little
soulscaper in its clutches, don’t you?’

‘How can you
be so callous!’ I said, privately agreeing with him.

‘We have to
face the worst possibility,’ Beth said, kissing the top of my head.
‘I don’t mean to sound callous.’ He sighed deeply. ‘And to think
that disgusting...
thing
... whatever it is, has been so
intimate with us. I feel sick to my bones! And, of course, Metatron
is going to be furious when he finds out what we did with
Amelakiveh. Oh, what a mess! We should have stayed in Atruriey,
Gimel. We should never have come back to Sacramante, after our stay
in Taparak. We were happy out there, weren’t we? None of this would
have happened. None of it!’

‘We are still
together,’ I said. ‘Despite everything.’

Beth sighed.
‘We are not what we were,’ he answered.

When Beth and
I returned to our domain, Metatron was waiting in my salon,
brooding in the middle of the room like an impending storm.
Avirzah’e was perched on the edge of chair, and looked up at us
with wild relief when we walked in. He resembled a miserable hound
that had just been severely whipped by strangers and was grieving
the lack of a common language to explain its humiliation to its
beloved master.

‘I cannot
strike you!’ Metatron thundered, pointing a rigid, steady finger at
Beth and myself. ‘Though I would very much like to! I have spoken
at length to Sandalphon today, and he told me many disturbing
things. Now I am told some human dreg has been found wandering
around Sacramante wearing the Metatronim seal - which was entrusted
into your care, Gimel! I hope you can explain yourself.’

I handed him
the ring without speaking, which he sneered at in distaste. ‘Well?
Do I get an explanation from you willingly or do I have to order
you to give it to me?’

‘The boy
wearing your seal was a dependant of ours, a human,’ I said. I
would be honest with Metatron to a point, but had no intention of
divulging exactly how Amelakiveh had come into our possession. ‘We
have discovered that his body has been inhabited by an invader’s
personality for the last twenty years. We have reason to believe
this personality might have come from Elenoen.’ I turned away from
my father, unable to face any further questions.

‘Tamaris and
Ramiz are your only dependants,’ he said, inevitably. ‘And Ramiz
has just divested me of my coat and hat in the hall. Who is this
other, that I do not know of.’

There was a
moment’s silence. I looked at Beth who was staring at me in terror.
I made a small signal to comfort him. I would handle this. I turned
around, drawing myself up to my full height. ‘An illicit
transmutation, if you must know,’ I said. ‘Don’t tell me this sort
of thing doesn’t happen, Metatron. We both know it does!’

Metatron’s
habitually pale face had gone decidedly pink along the cheekbones.
‘Children! Fools!’ he cried. ‘Are you intent on shaming me in every
way? I cannot believe this!’

‘Believe it,’
I said. ‘It’s quite true.’

Metatron
pulled a face at me that was little more than a snarl and then
turned on my brother. ‘Beth, you are a hedonistic whore and a
mindless dolt! Sandalphon has informed me of your perversity in the
Aurelium Chamber. I should knock you senseless!’ Then, he whipped
back towards me. ‘And you, Gimel, how could you, whom I trusted
implicitly, behave so recklessly, so senselessly?’ He pointed at
Avirzah’e without looking at him. ‘And is this impudent puppy who,
I am assured, has irretrievably debauched my son, anything to do
with
your
misguided behaviour?’

I shook my
head. ‘No, the impudence, foolishness and stupidity are all
mine!’

‘Curb your
audacity, daughter! You have behaved abominably to Sandalphon! I
could not believe the things he said to me about how you forced him
to open the Bale Tower. You have galloped like a mare in heat
through the composure of your race! You have lied and wheedled and
acted with unprecedented egocentric crassness! Despite explicit
orders to send the soulscaper away, I find letters from her lying
around your salon which indicate she is still in Sacramante and
that you are freely communicating with her. I am outraged and...
speechless
!’

‘Hardly
that
, father,’ I said. I realised he was really quite
delighted to be able to speak to me this way at last. All his
discontent was coming out. Soon, he would start shouting at me
about Sammael.

‘I should
order both you and your lackwit brother into retreat!’ Metatron
said, with relish.

‘Over my
lifeless remains!’ Beth snapped, unexpectedly. ‘Whatever you think
of me, how dare you speak to Gimel like that? We admit our
culpability over Amelakiveh, and for that we shall punish ourselves
more than you ever could. But Gimel has put her own life at risk
for the sake of our people. She has more bravery, guts and strength
than you could ever imagine possessing. I despise you!’