Scenting Hallowed Blood (39 page)

Although he pushed all thoughts
of the argument and its subject from his mind, Shem still couldn’t
sleep. Thoughts nd fragmented memories churned through his brain.
He found he was mixing up vague recollections of Aninka Prussoe
with those of Ishtahar, which were many thousands of years old. He
saw Ishtahar dressed in smart, modern clothes, standing in the
middle of a spreading corn-field, holding a mobile phone to her
ear, staring up at the blood-soaked clouds of an eastern sunset. He
saw barbarian armies, mounted on shaggy ponies, charging down a
stretch of the M1, slashing at stalled, listing lorries with their
swords. He saw the sky in flames and the Garden in Eden crash down
a mountain slope into a deserted shopping mall. He saw bodies lying
on steaming streets, where the waters of the flood had recently
receded. Bodies lying in mud and the stink of death everywhere.
These visions tortured him for hours.

Near dawn, Shemyaza woke up
with a start. He sat up in bed and glanced at the clock. Soon, it
would be dawn. A new day would start. Another day of questions,
demands and embarrassment. His skin itched unbearably and his head
beat with pain. He needed the freshness of the wind upon his body.
He needed to feel the space of the sky above him, feel solid earth
beneath his feet. Quietly, he slipped from the bed and dressed
himself. He went down through the sleeping house and out into the
garden. It was almost as if a silky voice was calling to him
through the chill air.

Shemyaza found himself standing
at the place where the gardens ended in a dizzying drop of cracked
serpentine. The beach seemed miles below. It was nearly high tide,
and the waves were a milky green colour, almost like liquid
serpentine themselves. Images and sounds pushed at the boundary of
his perception, clamouring to make contact with him. Wearily, Shem
relaxed and opened himself up to the environment.
Come on, then.
Show me.
He could hear the voices of sea spirits, joyful in the
threshing foam, calling out to one another. Their cries held a
melancholic quality; it was the song of the end of the world. When
he closed his eyes, a great city rose from the sea before him:
Lyonesse, in all her splendour, reborn. Water cascaded from her
gleaming spires. It seemed she was made all of glass or
encrustations of ancient crystal. This was the city of his
ancestors; images of an ancient time, recaptured in the memories of
the tides. The sheer walls of the city were surrounded by tall
spreading trees, whose stretching upper branches failed to reach
the marble battlements. Music came from the hidden temples, borne
on a skein of incense smoke. He heard the keening song of the
priestesses and the slap of bare feet on marble. He heard the
heart-song of the drums, the artful chink of bells at wrists and
ankles, and the whirl of gossamer fabric against satin flesh. He
heard the priests calling out in voices that mimicked the lament of
the sea folk and the cry of sea birds. The heat of the sun was on
his skin, and the scents of lost summers in his nostrils.

Shemyaza opened his eyes.

It was dark mid-winter, and the
grey sea heaved below him, shot with ghost-lights and the flash of
iridescent foam. But still there remained in the sky, above the
waves, a faint ghostly image of the lost city. The song of the
priestesses still came whispering to his ears, the sounds plaiting
and undulating in his mind, until it sounded as if it was a single
woman who sang; a woman alone and melancholy, wearing the willow
for a lost lover.

Shemyaza leaned against the
crumbling wall, and his weight precipitated the looser stones to
clatter down to the shore. Without thinking, he climbed over the
rubble and stood on the narrow ledge at the very edge of the cliff.
Eighteen inches of sandy, rock-strewn turf stretched between him
and the yawning space beyond. The wind pushed and pulled at his
body like spiteful hands, and snatched gleefully at his hair,
blowing it forward across his face in star-spun waves. Shem held
his flailing hair back from his eyes with both hands.

Show me, then. Show me why I’m
here...

As if something had been
awaiting his command, Shemyaza noticed movement in the cove below
him: shadowy forms materialised spontaneously and began to slip
across the sand towards the cliffs. They were primeval, amphibious
shapes; indistinct, but emanating an aura of unthinkable antiquity.
Slap of fin and flipper, glister of salt-polished hide. Humanoid,
but far from human, far from Grigori too.

Are these mine to
command?
The shapes paused in their blundering progress, as if
a noise had alerted them. Dark heads lifted and tasted the air. His
scent would be carried to them; the salty, musky perfume of his
masculinity, the smoky incense aroma of his thoughts.

A voice cut into his mind.
Where? Where?
Shemyaza was filled with anxiety and fear and
a desperate need for haste. On the sand below, he saw the vague
outline of a woman kneeling down. She patted the beach around her
with urgent fingers, as if she were searching for something. Like
the shadowy amphibians, she too appeared blind; her movements were
undirected and random. She investigated the same area again and
again, her hands skimming over the untested areas of sand. Shemyaza
sensed that if he allowed it, he could recognise this woman. He
forced his perception away from her and gazed out to sea.

Above the waves, the sky was
greeny blue, bloated with clouds, which glowed with eerie
phosphorescence. Lithe, dark shapes frolicked in the hectic foam
below, and Shemyaza could hear the deep, fluting bells of their
voices. Their cries inspired him with a fierce excitement. He felt
at once aroused and tranquil. As he gazed at the tumbling forms in
the waves, he noticed that one of them had become still. It
appeared to raise its head from the water, some yards out from
shore. Something about its posture, the sense that this creature
saw and recognised him, filled Shemyaza with anticipation. The
beast looked as if it was swimming towards the beach, but as it
approached, Shemyaza realised it was a human or humanoid figure
that was walking out of the sea. It halted some feet from where the
waves licked at the land, and held out its arms. Its perfect, slim
body was androgynous. Although the smudge of male genitals could be
discerned, its shape suggested femininity. Its hair was plastered
to its chest, which was covered in weed and what appeared to be
limpets. Its skin shone like nacre in the unnatural light and its
eyes were dreaming holes in its long, hollow face. But for its lack
of height, it would have looked like a drowned Watcher, disgorged
by the sea. Something about the creature made Shemyaza think of
Daniel; the boyish body, the aura of mystery. Was Daniel projecting
an image to him, lying abandoned in uneasy slumber, suffering a
nightmare? Then, Shemyaza saw the shape of Ishtahar shimmering
within the occult figure below. The streaks upon its body were not
swatches of damp weed, but curling tattoos. Shemyaza shuddered in
apprehension; Ishtahar and Daniel in one body. It was his desire
made flesh.

The androgynous figure let its
mouth drop open and uttered a monotonous, wailing call. It sounded
like the cry of birds, the symphonic bellow of whales. The song
called to Shem:
My Lord of Light, you need a new guide to this
old land. I am he. Come to me. Listen to my words, for I am the
child of the serpent. I have waited here for your advent. Let me
lead you to the secret caverns below the land. Let me walk before
you. Give me your cloak of feathers. I will be your
sacrifice.

To Shemyaza, half drugged by
the lure of the song, the offer seemed like an answer to a prayer.
He wondered whether the figure below could be the spirit of one of
the ancient Grigori, who had stepped ashore so long ago. Or perhaps
it was one of their hybrid children, a secret guardian, whom the
Parzupheim had not sniffed out. Perhaps the guardian had been
waiting for Shem, and would only make itself known to him.

Come to me now. Step from the
cliff, and come to me.

Shemyaza felt a wrenching in
his mind and body. The urge to comply was tempered by fear or an
instinct to survive. ‘I would come to you, but I cannot fly. I
surrendered my wings.’

Then call to the buzzard to
lend you his wings. Call him and conjure him, then take this leap,
the leap of faith...

Shemyaza gasped as if he’d been
punched in the ribs. He flung back his head and his arms rose
involuntarily towards the sky. He sucked in a lungful of the cold,
wet air and tasted metal and ozone on his tongue. A sound was
building up within his chest, swirling around inside him. He tried
to disgorge it, vomit it out, but it seemed such a part of him,
like a tumour. The sound expanded his lungs, growing in power,
until with a concentration of effort he managed to expel it in a
gust of breath. It flew out into the air, spreading its wings: an
ear-splitting shriek. It was the weird, raw screech of a bird of
prey. Now a flock of cries burst out of him. Shemyaza called to his
bird-form, the shape he wore for astral flight. The wind flung his
cries up into the air, scream upon scream, until the ground beneath
his feet vibrated to the call. Soon, he heard the shush and clatter
of wings approaching through the wind, and felt the bird-spirit
buffet his head. Its claws tangled in his flying hair, and the
carrion smell of it filled his head with the odour of rotten meat.
Shemyaza called the spirit into him, until he was smothered in a
mantle of fetid stench. He felt the cloak of feathers form around
him, snug around his raised arms. He leaned forward into the wind,
and felt its fierce, elemental fingers push up against the
feathers.

Shemyaza had flown a thousand
times in his mind, during trance. But never had he attempted the
practice in reality. The smell of the wings surrounded him. He
could feel the sharp ends of pinions digging into his flesh. This
was no vision, but truth.

Now fly! Now come to me!
The figure on the shore was glowing like the bilious clouds with a
wan, greenish-yellow lustre.

Shemyaza flexed his wings and
stepped from the cliff into a void.

The ground rushed up to meet
him, each detail of the rocks below brought into sharp focus.
Nano-seconds stretched into eternity. He knew he was falling fast,
yet it seemed to take forever to reach the ground.
I was
tricked! I am dying!
The scapegoat. Pushed from the cliff.
Panic surged through his body, almost occluding consciousness. Then
the ground disappeared, and he was falling into a black abyss.
Down. Down. Through time. It could only be backwards.

Shemyaza fell from the sky, a
burning angel. The sun was hot upon his wings and below him
stretched a range of spiky mountains, which he knew were of the
lost land of Eden. He thought he would fall straight to the ground
and threshed his pinions in terror, but soon he remembered the
technique of it, and soared upwards, riding the sizzling thermals.
He flew over the mountains, until he saw the familiar landmarks of
the Garden, Kharsag, a valley of fertility concealed by the
punishing crags. This was the settlement of the Anannage, whom
humanity called the Serpent People, the Feathered Serpents, the
Angels. It was the place of his birth, his torment and his death.
In this place he’d held the office of Watcher, and humans knew him
as a son of God, a son of the High Lord Anu. The Lord called all
the Watchers his sons and claimed to love them.

Shemyaza circled the Garden
several times. On the southern side, the mountains descended into
the lush fertile lowlands, where the Anannage had conducted their
education programmes with humans, whom they considered to be a
primitive race. On the northern side, cliffs shielded the Garden
from a barren wilderness where only savages lived. Instinctively,
Shemyaza was drawn to this direction.

Half a day’s walk north from
the Garden, there was a place holy to the Anannage. They called it
the Bowl of Giving and Receiving. Here, they offered sacrifices to
the Elders, the source of their intelligence that existed beyond
the universe. The Bowl was a large flat plateau on the
mountain-side, which hung out over a tortuous slope of scree that
led down to the desert wilderness below. Shem recognised it
immediately, and his wings faltered. He knew what he would see at
this place, what he’d been brought here to remember.

A large amount of people had
gathered on the Bowl, all dressed in ceremonial robes. A ritual was
taking place there. Shemyaza flew lower, aware that no-one could
sense his presence. He felt he should be reluctant to witness what
he knew to be happening, but was empty of feeling. Then he saw
himself down there.

The young Shemyaza: a foolish
romantic, being led to the place of sacrifice by a phalanx of
Serafim.

His older consciousness looked
down in revulsion and despising.
Stupid idiot,
he thought.
You believed you were honoured and that your sacrifice was holy,
but that was only a disguise for punishment. You fell for it, and
then took the hardest fall.

Ultimately, he had died because
of his love for Ishtahar and the fruits of his bitterness, which
had burgeoned from the punishment he’d suffered. But the events
taking place below him now preceded the sentence of death by many
years. This was the information that Daniel had not recalled and
which had existed in Shem’s memory only dimly. Now, it came gushing
back with harsh clarity.

Long before the events that led
to Shemyaza’s execution, Anu’s viziers had loosed their poison
tongues in the Mountain House where Anu sat upon his throne. They
had told the High Lord that Shemyaza and his colleagues had taken
human lovers and were revealing Anannage secrets to the women. Anu
had been astounded and angry, but his full wrath had not been
invoked. He had been prepared to be lenient and had withheld the
sentence of death. As Shemyaza was seen as the ringleader in this
carnal cabal, Anu had held him responsible for his brothers’
actions.