Scenting Hallowed Blood (12 page)

She was still smiling, her
long, graceful feet dancing upon the moonlit waves.

‘
Ishtahar, Shemyaza will
not listen to me. He will not
become.
Help me.’

She paused. ‘Daniel, beloved, I
am powerless to affect the destiny of the divine in flesh. The time
of resurrection is at hand. I can only lament for the loss of his
light but I am she who is eternally with you.’

‘
But what can I
do?’

‘
Swim to shore.’ With
these words, she vanished, and there was only white moonlight
falling on his face where once her shadow had hung.

Daniel woke up, dazzled by
moonlight, yet none fell into the room. Without pausing to think,
he struggled into a T-shirt and hurried from his room. He could no
longer keep silent. Not now!

He entered Shemyaza’s room
without knocking. Shem lay asleep, half in, half out of the bed,
his long, pale limbs illumined by the flickering colours emanating
from the silent TV. Daniel paused, momentarily taken aback. Shem
looked so vulnerable lying there. He could be killed so easily.
Daniel padded softly towards the bed, wondering how close he could
get before Shem woke up. Before he was within three feet of the
trailing duvet, Shem cast it back and said, ‘Are you frightened?
Are you cold? Get in.’

Daniel was neither of these
things, but slipped into the hot nest. He wondered why Shem’s
reserves were down tonight. Normally, he would let none of them get
so close. Daniel decided not to question this matter, for fear of
invoking Shem’s distancing cold. He put an arm around Shem’s body,
and conjured no rebuff. Shem merely sighed deeply, lying on his
back.

‘
I had a dream,’ Daniel
said.

‘
Only that?’ Shem reached
out and stroked his hair. ‘I never dream now.’

‘
I saw her, Shem. I saw
Ishtahar.’ He felt Shemyaza’s arms stiffen, the slight sense of
withdrawal.

‘
It was just a dream.
Forget it.’

‘
I can’t. I think it was
important. I was floating in the sea. I think it was Cornwall, and
she walked towards me across the water. She told me to swim to the
shore. But I woke up.’

‘
There is no Ishtahar,’
Shemyaza said. ‘She’s dead. Dead and gone a long time ago. Whereas
you... my faithful Daniel, you have followed me across the deserts
of time, kept at my heels, remained faithful in life and death. And
here you are now. Where is the woman? Gone.’ He leaned over Daniel
in the bed, and Daniel was flooded with a sense of remembrance,
from a life long past. He could almost smell the incense and the
clear air of the forgotten country. It was springtime, and the air
was balmy. Ishtahar lay in the future, an undreamed-of threat. He
closed his eyes, waiting for the kiss, the long-fingered hand upon
his waist, but it did not come. Shemyaza sighed and lay back down.
Daniel sat up and found himself looking at a fierce
grin.

‘
I am castrated by my own
delinquencies,’ Shem said. ‘Not even with you can I overcome them.
The thought even of a kiss turns my stomach, yet you are a lovely
creature.’

Daniel lay down with his head
upon Shem’s chest. He curled his fingers in the long strands of
pale hair that lay there, damp against the skin. ‘Just sleep,’ he
said. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ In his heart, he knew that it did.
Impotency was just another part of the murky hinterland that was
once the light of his soul.

Shemyaza lay awake for a long
time, staring at the ceiling. He suppressed any thought of
Ishtahar, and tried to concentrate on the lithe, young body against
him. Why couldn’t he find succour in communion of the flesh? At one
time, it had been his gift to humanity, and theirs to him. Now, he
was empty of feeling and could not even draw comfort from the
warmth of arms around him. Brief, tantalising images surfaced in
his mind: Ishtahar’s laughter ringing out, the smell of corn, the
fierce heat of the sun against his naked skin. He pushed these
memories back down into the deepest recesses of his brain. Then
came the unbidden recollection of the original Daniel: their heat,
their oiled bodies sliding against one another in the perfumed
shadows of the great, cool house, which once had been home.
Why
can’t I recapture that now in reality?

He ran his hand down Daniel’s
sleeping flank, and in his memory felt a surge of lust, but in the
present moment, felt nothing. Fretfully, he rolled Daniel onto his
back and pressed his lips against Daniel’s own, but it was like
putting his mouth against yielding cloth. There was no exchange of
feeling. Daniel murmured in his sleep and frowned, then rolled onto
his side. Shemyaza watched him for a moment, then lay back down,
his arms behind his head. If this was the way it was to be, he
could do nothing about it. His head ached with the desire to
recapture sleep, and slowly, fitfully, it came to him.

She was waiting there for him,
beyond the threshold of wakefulness: a young woman, dark of skin
and hair, robed in blue, with small gold beads chinking in her
braided hair. She sat upon a shingled beach, her slim, brown arms
encircling her raised knees. The froth-cuffed waves lapped at her
bare toes. Bright sunlight gleamed against her skin. Ishtahar: as
lovely as a man could imagine or a woman could fear. As she saw
Shemyaza walking towards her, she raised a hand in casual greeting
and smiled.

He did not return the signal,
afraid she would disappear or mutate into something hideous the
moment he acknowledged her. Still, her image did not flicker or
fade as he drew near. She appeared to be as relaxed as if they’d
only recently parted and this was a planned meeting.

Shemyaza cast his shadow over
her. He could smell a musky scent emanating from her body, and the
languorous curves of her limbs murmured to him in a silent language
of sensual promise. She was a witch, like a drug, a poison. His
whole body ached at the sight of her.

‘
Hello, Shem,’ she said.
‘How are you?’

He sensed amusement behind her
words, or perhaps, even now, it was bitterness.

‘
I am broken, but I’d
have thought you’d know this. Why torment me?’

She squinted up at him,
shielding her black-rimmed eyes with one henna-patterned hand. ‘You
speak of torment? Ah, the selfishness of men! Can’t you think of
anyone’s anguish but your own?’

He sighed impatiently. ‘Is this
why I am here? For you to scold me?’ He thought to himself:
I am
dreaming, and this vision is my own creation.

Ishtahar, however, seemed
oblivious to the fact she might not be real. ‘Scold you?’ She
uttered an indignant sound. ‘Can’t you stop for a moment, and
consider
my
torment? You dwell in the realm of flesh, and
walk upon the breast and body of the earth. Your light is hers to
absorb. Yet, where am I? Nowhere and everywhere. Oh, I can tell you
of torment!’ She leaned back on straight arms, gazing out to
sea.

Shemyaza hunkered down beside
her. He wanted to speak, yet there were too many words in his head
to choose from. Most of them seemed inappropriate.

Perhaps taking his silence as
contrition, Ishtahar spoke again. ‘I have had an eternity to ponder
our time together. Sometimes I used to wonder what it all meant,
but that was when I still had flesh about my soul. You were taken
from me by the war that your angry heart waged against your
brethren, supposedly for the enlightenment of my
primitive
people. What was I meant to feel about that? Serenity? Acceptance?’
She shook her head, and the gold beads flew around her. ‘I hated
the world for the sacrifice it had demanded. I hated my captors,
who called themselves guardians. They told me my tears created a
flood to purge the world of sin and blame, but I was purged of
nothing. All of it remained inside me, heavy like a child that
would not be born.’ She sighed deeply. ‘Now, beyond life, I have
been made a goddess, and my grief is eternal. I did not ask for
what happened after I met you. Perhaps I was wrong to lie with you,
perhaps we were both foolish to believe it would have no
repercussions. I was simply a woman in love, who had no idea what
tragedies that love would spawn.’

There was a silence, then Shem
said, ‘I should not have come to you then. Now, I wish I
hadn’t.’

Ishtahar laughed coldly. ‘Oh,
but what a different place your world of men would be if you had
not!’

Shem grimaced. ‘I am sick of
the world of men!’

Ishtahar put her head on one
side. ‘But it is a world you chose! Can’t you remember? You took
your punishment gladly, sacrificed yourself to seek the light of
redemption.’

Shem shook his head. ‘There was
more to it than that. I was young and ignorant. I was betrayed. Now
I am ruined. I want only to end it all.’

Ishtahar looked away from him.
‘From the ashes of ruin comes the phoenix of fire to herald a new
dawn.’ It seemed she was quoting from something. She smiled and
glanced at him again. ‘You live as a man now, Shem, but it is only
as a god that you can end it.’

‘
Right, I shall deify
myself this instant!’ He smiled sadly. ‘Ishti, what is this? Why
are we here talking like this? How can it change things? Do we have
anything to share apart from bitterness or
recriminations?’

She shrugged. ‘I like to think
so, but if you refuse to take what I say seriously, then there is
little hope. Believe me: you must be more than a man.’

‘
Don’t you think I
haven’t tried that?’ he said angrily. ‘My life as Peverel Othman
was dedicated to that, in a perverse fashion! And what good did
that do?’

‘
Misguided,’ Ishtahar
replied. ‘You concentrated on clawing open the stargate, thinking
that finding access to the Source would empower you. Wrong. The
redemption you need and truly seek lies within yourself already.
That is where you’ll find godhead. And even now, despite your
flippant words, you hunger for it.’

Shem fixed her with a burning
stare. ‘I hunger only for you.’

She smiled tightly. ‘Remember,
I am a goddess now. Only as a god may you return to me. That is the
way of things.’

‘
Then tell me
how!’

‘
I just have!’

Shem shook his head. ‘No, what
you said means nothing in real terms. Look inside myself?’ He made
a scoffing sound and pressed a closed fist against his chest.
‘There’s only darkness inside me, and I can’t see the way!’

Ishtahar regarded him steadily
for a few moments. Shem wondered why he couldn’t just reach out and
take her in his arms. This interaction of words seemed meaningless.
In the past, their strength had been in physical communion. But it
seemed as if an invisible barrier lay between them. He dared not
attempt to breach it, sensing that if he did, Ishtahar would
vanish.

After a while, she spoke. ‘I
have been thinking how I might help you. You must understand it’s
difficult for me, there are constraints about me. However, I can at
least tell you this. Your vizier knows the place of your ancestors
and descendants. He hears its call. Listen to him. Let him be your
guiding light. I know there is still much darkness ahead.’

‘
My ancestors? My
descendants? Why? Where?’

Ishtahar leaned forward,
clasping her knees once more. Her voice took on a lilting tone, as
if she recited poetry. ‘Come, gaze upon this water, for it is the
ocean of my tears. A part of you lies sleeping deep within the
belly of these serpent rocks. It is ready to be reawakened. Keep
the light of the truth that I have spoken strong within you. And do
not be tempted by my image again, until my time for flesh is
come.’

Shem knew then that he had
reached the end of his dream. The waves crashed upon the shore,
drowning out any further words Ishtahar might have spoken, and
presently he was sitting alone, gazing up at the sky, where dark
masses of cloud moved quickly, inexorably to obscure the sun.

In the morning, Shemyaza awoke
late, to find Daniel standing over him holding a mug of tea. ‘Kiss
me,’ Shem said.

Daniel put down the tea on the
floor and knelt beside the bed. His eyes looked faintly troubled,
but he put his hands upon Shem’s shoulders and leaned forward to
kiss him briefly.

It was a start, Daniel
supposed, though for some reason he felt unhappy doing it. Shem’s
lips were unresponsive beneath his own, but at least they were
warm.

‘
Was it Cornwall?’ Shem
asked him.

Daniel knelt upright, his hands
plunged between his thighs. ‘In the dream? Yes, I think so.’

‘
Are you
sure?’

Daniel frowned. ‘As much as I
can be.’

Shem nodded. ‘Thank you.’

Daniel said nothing more, but
offered the mug to Shem again. He took it. Daniel watched him
drink, the movement in his long throat. Was his question
significant? Could it possibly mean Shem was considering acting
upon it? He dared not hope, and was frightened of asking questions
for fear of killing any recently born purpose before it could take
a hold in Shem’s mind.

A long, green limousine stood in the
rain before the columned portico of High Crag House. The Cornish
weather was at its most fierce, battering the long windows of the
house with spears of rain. There were no stars visible in the sky,
but merely the shadows of boiling cloud. Wind howled about the
chimneys. The limousine had brought a visitor to High Crag; a seat
of Grigori power, home of the Prussoes, where Aninka had grown
up.

Enniel Prussoe received the
woman, Sofia, in his office, where the long curtains were drawn
against the night, fretted only slightly by the most persistent of
breezes which fought their way in around the window-frames. Warm
light bloomed discreetly from a number of Tiffany lamps, and the
fire was banked high. The room smelled of leather and pine, its
high walls adorned with tapestries and paintings. Enniel stood
before his desk, a perfect example of the cream of his race; tall,
his long, red hair confined neatly at his neck, his clothes casual
yet expensive. He appeared to be a man in his early thirties, yet
he had lived through two centuries already and was still young in
Grigori terms. His fine-boned face was composed in a bland
expression. He was not looking forward to this interview.