Burying the Shadow (33 page)

I struggled to
Keea’s side. ‘I’m not putting my hands in that!’

‘Did I ask you
to help?’ He threw a handful of leaves at me and smiled.

Sighing, I
began to pull at the dead vines. ‘What do you want to show me?’

‘Wait and
see.’

The tough
woody stems inflicted further damage on my fingers and tore my
nails. ‘This had better be worth the effort!’ I said.

‘You will
really have to learn to trust me,’ Keea replied.

I pulled a
particularly stubborn vine-rope from the wall and threw it over his
shoulders. ‘You are a real showman, Keea. I commend your
performance.’

‘This is not
for your entertainment, Mistress Rayojini, but your
enlightenment.’

‘Then why not
just tell me what this is all about?’

Predictably,
he did not answer.

‘There,’ he
said at last, standing back and folding his arms, which were
scratched to the elbows. I glanced at him, wordlessly, and then
went to examine the wall. We had uncovered a series of pictorial
carvings, a picture story, which related some mythological or
historical event. At one time, they would have been brightly
painted because, in places where the vine-roots had not been too
destructive, flecks of colour remained. I leaned forward to peer at
the pictures, but Keea, standing behind me, put his hands on my
arms and pushed me to the left. ‘No, they start here. Read it.’

I let him
guide me.

The first
picture represented the androgyne Helat. It was crouched in a huge
hole in the ground, perhaps the Sink itself, with its legs spread
wide, delivering an obscene amount of infants into the world; they
poured from between its legs in a torrent. Above it, figures that
might have been angry spirits thronged the sky, shaking their fists
and throwing down bolts of lightning. In the next few pictures,
Helat’s spawn - clearly the creatures now known as the Host of
Helat - were shown dispersing into the societies of mankind. They
were much taller than the humans, and were depicted in a stylised
way that again reminded me of Deltan art. Whereas humanity was
shown as an active bundle of chaos, the Host were towering and
rather sinister creatures, and even though they were only carvings,
I detected a great sense of stillness about them, and focussed
intention. The humans paid them no attention. Perhaps the Host were
invisible to humankind. But no, further panels revealed members of
the Host apparently teaching people; the science of medicine, the
science of the stars, the arts. In most of these panels, the sky
was represented as being full of boiling clouds and thunderbolts.
Then, the pictures became rather more fascinating.

The first of
this sequence presented a member of the Host leaning over a
recumbent man in a manner suggesting the act of love. The Host
creature was female; her breasts bare, the nipples clearly erect.
Her hands clawed into the shoulders of the man, whose head was
flung back, his face, even after centuries of weathering, wearing
an expression of ecstasy. The next panel showed the Host-female and
the man engaged in copulation, although now the female seemed to
have been overcome by lust because she was biting her lover on the
throat! The man, apparently helpless but enraptured beneath her,
seemed to be a willing victim to her ravages. His face was still
ecstatic. I was smiling to myself, wondering about Keea’s motive in
wanting me to see this. I was just about to make a facetious
remark, when the next picture I examined made me gasp. It depicted
the unfortunate lover of the female-host lying dead in his house.
His family were shown grieving around his bed, although the corpse
was smiling radiantly. This was followed by a representation of the
man’s funeral procession - the obsequy cart, the line of dancing
mourners - but that was not all; every symbol, those on the cart
itself, on the head-gear of the mourners, on the shroud of the
deceased, were those of the Holy Death. This
was
the Holy
Death! Copulation with a member of the Host while being preyed
upon; sex as death. The symbol of the succubus was an ancient one,
and quite common in the soulscape, but this was different. Succubae
and incubi did not mingle with humanity; they attacked under cover
of night. Here, the spawn of a god imparted great wisdom, all the
sciences and arts, and then preyed upon the people to whom they had
bestowed this knowledge. What allegory was this? I had never
encountered it in the soulscape, which was not just unusual but
impossible. All human mythology could be accessed through the
soulscape, however ancient, so why not this? I knew that old
religious symbolism was often a metaphor for historical facts. How
could I interpret all this? Was there a shred of truth here? Had
some ancient race preyed upon humanity in some way, so that certain
conditions of death now echoed those old legends?

‘Well, are you
impressed or not?’ Keea asked. I turned to look at him
accusingly.

‘You know what
this is?’

He merely smiled.

‘Keea, how did
you know this was here?’ I demanded. ‘How could you have known? It
hasn’t been touched for centuries?’

‘I didn’t know
for sure. I just read it somewhere and had to come and see.’

‘Just read it
somewhere?’ I could have hit him. Did he think I was so stupid? ‘Is
this why you’re travelling with the nomads?’ I asked, gesturing at
the walls. ‘Were you hoping they’d lead you to this place?’

‘Partly.’

I folded my
arms. ‘So, the time has come for illumination! Come on, tell me
what interest you have in all this. You know that I’m researching
the cause of the non-death, and that I suspect it may be linked to
the Holy Death, otherwise you wouldn’t have shown me this. You
stroked it out of the shaman, I suppose. Well, it’s no secret. What
I want to know is; why are you researching the same thing? How are
you involved?’

‘Personally?
Not at all,’ he said. ‘I’m in the service of someone else.’

‘Who?’ I was
desperate to know.

‘Maybe you’ll
find out,’ he replied. ‘Maybe you’ll meet them. One day.’

‘Your love of
mystery is really quite tiresome, you know!’

He
shrugged.

‘Do I have to
guess? Is it someone in Bochanegra? Have the weird phenomena spread
that far? Is that it?’

‘They are
interested in the same subject as you, yes. There are questions to
be asked.’

‘Do they know
the history behind these carvings?’

‘The history
is obvious, isn’t it?’

‘Is it? Keea,
I really think we should be working on this together. We could help
each other, exchange information. You must tell me all you know. It
might save lives.’

He laughed. ‘What I
know is more likely to end them!’

‘Keea!’

‘Work it out,
Rayojini. The truth is there. Work it out.’

I had a
thousand more questions to ask him, but he was already heading back
for the doorway. ‘Wait!’ I called. ‘You can’t just leave! There’s
so much more to see! What about the other walls?’

He did not
pause. ‘No, there’s nothing more,’ he said. ‘You’ve seen it
all.’

I stood there
helplessly. Damn him then! I would investigate the rest of the
place by myself. He paused in the doorway. ‘Your time has expired,
soulscaper. The permit has been revoked. If you are wise, you will
follow me out of here.’

I opened my
mouth to protest, but could not utter a sound. Maybe Keea invoked
something through the tone of his voice, or maybe a breath of the
wind coming down through the cracks in the roof made it happen, or
even the thundering of my own heart, maybe all of these, but
suddenly the temple became a violently hostile place. For no
apparent reason, all the birds swooped down from their nests, and
subjected me to a vicious attack. Even as they were flapping and
screeching round my head, veils of bats lifted from the high
foliage and poured down around me in a great squeaking maelstrom.
The air became chaos; leaves and twigs swirled up from the floor.
Hitting out blindly with my hands, I felt claws and feathers snag
in my hair. Panicking, and shielding my face, I could only crouch
down and scurry out of the building as quickly as my legs would
carry me.

Keea had
waited for me a little way along the path, but he did not turn
round as I emerged. I called his name, stumbling forward, and he
began to trot ahead of me, slapping branches from his path. The air
was full of the angry screams of birds, the whirr of their wings. I
ran after Keea with my hands over my head, the birds seemingly in
pursuit.

After a while,
everything went silent; all I could hear was my own ragged breath
and the rustle of foliage as I pushed it aside. My chest ached
agonisingly, and I had to pause and catch my breath, or risk
collapse. Keea did not wait for me. Perhaps he was more frightened
than I was, or perhaps now that he had shown me the temple, he no
longer cared what happened to me. I did not call him back. Later, I
would corner him, and he would answer my questions willingly or
have the information beaten out of him! What had happened back
there? Had Keea made it happen? Gasping, I turned around.

Behind me,
there was no evidence of anyone having disturbed the foliage, not
for a hundred centuries.

By the time I
emerged, groping, along the flanks of the statue of Helat, the
glade was mostly in shadow, the sun having fallen into the embrace
of the highest trees. There was no sign of Keea at all. Helat’s
presence was very strong; I felt as if unseen claws were tweaking
the nerves in my spine. Quickly, I crossed the open space without
looking up at the statue, and plunged into the trees beyond. I
wanted to find the camp as soon as possible; even Sah’ray in her
most abrasive mood would be a relief after this! Luckily, the
tribes were preparing for their evening festivities with a good
deal of noise. My ears led me back.

Sah’ray was
indignant that I’d disappeared, having arranged several
consultations for me with some of her Toorish friends that
afternoon. As she had mentioned none of this to me, I could not
understand why she was so angry. I suspected she must have planned
to make a clandestine profit from these appointments. ‘You said you
were just going to bathe, Rayo! Where have you been! You’re so...
so
secretive
!’ she complained.

‘I went back
to the sacred glade actually,’ I said. ‘I wanted to see it by
daylight.’

A frown
furrowed her brow. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘That’s supposed to be unlucky,
you know. Helat only allows people into the glade at sacred times.
I hope you didn’t cause offence.’

‘I was most
polite,’ I said. ‘I’m sure the god will forgive the blunderings of
an uninformed foreigner.’

‘Hmmph!’
Sah’ray grumbled, unsure whether I was mocking her or not. ‘Why are
you such a mess? What did you do there?’

‘I went for a
walk in the woods and got a bit lost.’

‘Helat’s Eye,
your hands!’

‘Had to burrow
my way out at one point.’ I knew I sounded sheepish, but mercifully
Sah’ray abandoned the interrogation.

‘That
soulscaper girl was here looking for you,’ she said.

I was not
surprised.

I quickly
wrote up an account of everything I had experienced in the Temple
of Helat. Sah’ray insisted on looking over my shoulder the entire
time, but fortunately, she couldn’t read Tappish. Well, at least I
knew where I was heading now: Sacramante. I would have to
interrogate Keea to find out where the libraries he had spoken of
could be found. If only I could ascertain who his masters were. He
was being most obstructive. It was obvious they’d want to know my
findings as much as I wanted to know theirs. I considered what I’d
learned: could the Host be a metaphor for a disease? Perhaps the
Holy Death had been more common at one time and people had tried to
explain it by anthropomorphising it. Yes, that made sense. Still,
it was strange how Holy victims were always taken at night. What
could that mean? Was it something to do with the temperature of the
air changing at dusk? Holy victims smiled in death, as if they had
welcomed it. Why? Hadn’t they known they were going to die?

Pleasurable
nocturnal deaths would, in primitive minds, give rise to the idea
of incubi and succubae perhaps. Now, how could all this possibly
relate to the advent of miracles and inexplicable events? I tidied
away my notes. More information was needed. The fright I had
suffered seemed nothing more than the product of a feverish
imagination now. Keea had scared the birds and bats somehow; quite
effective. He was not just a showman but also an accomplished
magician!

A night of
drinking, eating and general wildness would be quite a fitting end
to my partnership with the Halmanes. I was now in the mood for
celebration. Soon, I would be alone again, alone with my thoughts
and the sound of my own footsteps. I knew I should make the most of
human company before this time. Perhaps even a final dalliance with
sweet Aniti. I suppose I owed her an explanation, at least. Sexual
partners who dropped you without a word caused the most horrible of
self-doubts. I was also anticipating getting my hands on Keea; he
would not evade my questions so easily again. In a way, I was
excited and pleased that others were making investigations in the
same direction as me. Realistically, it was inevitable that someone
would be doing so; my intellect wasn’t unique.

I changed my
clothes, and allowed Sah’ray to line my eyes with black kohl and
tidy up a few of my braids, which had come loose in the scrabble
through the wood that afternoon. She had forgotten her annoyance
with me and, as we preened ourselves in the murky confines of her
tent, happily babbled to me about who she intended to snare as a
sexual partner before the night was over. We shared a few cups of
thick, sweet wine to get us in the mood for celebration. Before the
festivities, however, one of Q’orveh’s female acolytes appeared
outside, and I was summoned to the shaman’s tent.