Burying the Shadow (62 page)

‘Back
entrance?’ I asked. ‘Are the caretakers friends of yours?’

He grinned,
tapped his nose, and tugged on a bell-rope. It must have rung
somewhere deep within the building; nothing could be heard from
outside. There was no immediate response.

‘Keea, there
must be a main entrance somewhere,’ I said. ‘This is probably just
some forgotten rear door at the end of a walled-off corridor, or
something. Shouldn’t we take a look around the front?’

‘Have
patience,’ he said to me, and pulled the bell-rope again.

After another
short wait, we were rewarded by the sound of locks being wrestled
with, and the door opened a fraction. I could not see who was
inside. Keea pulled back his coat sleeve and extended his hand
beyond the doorway. ‘You know this seal?’ he demanded in an
authoritative voice. There was a mumble behind the door. ‘Let us
in,’ Keea said. ‘It is urgent we consult the archives.’ The door
creaked open a little wider and Keea beckoned to me. ‘Be quick,
Rayojini,’ he said.

I entered a
musty, gloomy corridor, where a stooped, robed ancient glared at me
beadily. I smiled at him hopefully.

‘She is not
eloim!’ the ancient snapped at Keea, and then peered at him
suspiciously. ‘And you... What are you?’

‘The woman is
Tappish,’ Keea replied in a smooth voice, ‘but in the employ of the
Metatronims, as am I. We both have license to be here.’

I listened to
these words with amazement, but kept my silence.

‘I have
received no warning that the Metatronims wish to consult the
archives!’ the ancient said. ‘This is most irregular. Neither is it
normal practice for dependants to be sent here!’

‘Would I carry
Metatron’s seal if this was not official business?’ Keea enquired
silkily. ‘Please, do not delay us. It might cause affront.’

The old man
sighed and shook his head. ‘Very well.’

‘Show us the
catalogue,’ Keea said.

‘This way,
this way.’ The old man shuffled off up the corridor and Keea
gestured for me to follow.

‘Since when
have I been in the employ of the Metatronims?’ I whispered, in awe
of Keea’s nerve at suggesting such a thing.

‘Since you
were eight years old,’ he replied bluntly.

I cried out
and clutched his arm, unable to move other than that. ‘What? What
did you say?’

‘You heard.
Let go of me, Rayo.’ He eased my fingers from his sleeve. ‘Very
soon, everything will become clear to you. All the answers are here
in this building.’

‘Keea you
knew... you’ve always known everything about me, haven’t you,’ I
said. I felt strangely relieved; he
was
connected with
Gimel, then.

‘And so will
this old goat if you don’t keep your voice down,’ he replied. ‘Yes,
I knew. I knew of your special affinity with the Metatronims.’

‘And in Khalt,
in the Strangeling, you let me carry on thinking I was suffering
from delusions.’

‘That’s
because you were. There is more to this than you could ever
imagine, Rayo.’

‘Why didn’t
you tell me? Why wait till now?’

‘Planning,’ he
replied. ‘You’ll see.’

The old man
showed us into a dim, cluttered room, where light struggled for
entrance through a dusty, flyblown window high above our heads.
Ancient ledgers filled shelves from floor to ceiling. ‘How familiar
are you with the contents of this building?’ Keea asked.

The old man chewed
thoughtfully. ‘More than anyone else,’ he replied. ‘What are you
seeking?’

‘Ancient
history. Before the wars. The beginning.’

The old man
nodded and began to peer at the shelves, pulling the ledgers out,
seemingly at random, flicking through them, shaking his head and
shoving them back. Then he uttered a delighted cry, as if he’d
doubted his ability to locate what we needed, and handed the ledger
he had found to Keea. ‘Do these documents cover the period you’re
interested in?’

Keea squinted
at the faded text. I looked over his shoulder. ‘Do they?’ I asked.
All the pages were crumbling badly and, to me, the list of
documents was illegible. It was also inscribed in a language
unfamiliar to me.

‘The account
by Veraniel Eshim,’ Keea said, pointing to a few crabbed
characters. ‘May we see that?’

The old man
made a disgruntled sound. ‘It is restricted.’

‘I know. Where
is it?’

‘It is
restricted,’ the old man repeated.

Keea sighed
and extended his left hand again. I saw the ring on his third
finger. I had not seen it before. ‘By this authority, I demand you
give me the text,’ he said. ‘Be quick! We don’t have time to
waste!’

‘You must sign
for it.’

‘I’ll sign in
blood, if necessary,’ Keea said. ‘Now, where is it?’

‘This
way.’

We were taken
up numerous shadowed corridors, through many book-lined rooms. I
had never seen so much knowledge gathered together in one place; it
was phenomenal. As far as I was aware, not even the Guild in
Taparak knew of this library.

The revered
account lay in a locked cabinet high in the building. The layout of
the library amused me as much as I found it perplexing; so many
small rooms packed with manuscripts, books and ledgers. The place
we were taken to was uncommonly tidy; just the cabinet, a table and
a few uncomfortable chairs.

Shaking his
head and sighing heavily, the old man reluctantly sifted through a
collection of keys hanging from his belt and opened the cabinet. He
extracted the book Keea had asked for, as if it was a holy relic,
and brushed its cover with his sleeve. ‘This text cannot be taken
from the building,’ he said. ‘It is very valuable, very
ancient.’

‘We will read
it here,’ Keea replied. ‘Thank you. Leave us now.’

‘I
cannot...’

‘Leave us!’
Keea’s voice thundered through the room. It even raised the hairs
on the back of my neck. The old man backed from the room.

‘I will have
to lock you in,’ he said.

‘Do it then.
Return in two hours.’ Keea sat down at the table without paying the
archivist any more attention, and carefully opened the ancient
book. I watched with misgiving as the door closed and a key turned
in the lock.

‘Look, Rayo,’
Keea said, in a hushed voice.

I dragged a
chair to his side and sat down. ‘I can’t read that! It’s
gibberish!’

Deltan
hieroglyphs would have been easier to translate. The text was
inscribed in flaking rusty-coloured ink on disintegrating yellow
parchment. It seemed more like an astrological chart than a
narrative. The glyphs appeared mathematical, and some looked to me
as if they might be illustrations or diagrams. ‘What language is
this?’ I asked. As a Tap, I was familiar with all the languages of
the known world. This was like nothing I’d ever seen before.

‘It is a very
ancient text, Rayo,’ Keea said, turning the thick, brittle pages,
and examining them closely, ‘and of course you cannot read it, but
I can. I shall read it aloud to you.’

‘How can you
read it?’ I was bemused - and yes even a little jealous - of Keea’s
apparent knowledge of this strange tongue. ‘Who taught you?’

He shrugged,
still staring at the book. ‘Let us just say, it was one of the
privileges of being an artisan...
employee
.’

‘Then tell me
what it says.’

He looked up
from the page and I had to repress an urge to flinch away from the
intensity in his eyes. It was as if I’d never seen him before, as
if he were a complete stranger. ‘This will alter your perception of
the world,’ he said.

‘How?’

‘Because it is
the true history.’ He reached out and touched my face, causing me
to stiffen instinctively.

‘True history
of what?’ I found his sudden passion for whatever the book
concealed strangely repellent.

‘Rayo,
listen...’

“
This is
the testament of I, Veraniel Eshim, transcribed in the wake of the
Fall of the Lord Sammael and his Followers, to Earth.
I
plead that my readers will exercise tolerance of this history,
whatever their creed or culture.
These words are written for
the future, to keep the flame of truth burning in the
world.

There are many
worlds, not all of which are planets.

And yet,
whatever their shape, form or reality, each world is but a layer in
the thick fabric of the multiverse.

All the worlds
are inter-related; some have more intimate relationships than
others.

Some derive
sustenance from each other in the form of energy or strength.

Such was the
relationship between the worlds that have been named by their
inhabitants as Elenoen and Earth.

Elenoen is
very close to Earth; in the very next sliver of reality.

They are
naturally attracted to each other and, in the natural course of
things, sustain each other in subtle ways.
Elenoen is the
fount of spirit, whereas Earth is the cauldron of the generation of
flesh.
The two worlds have existed in harmony, sharing their
essential properties.

But
calamities have occurred to sever this relationship.
This is
the history of it.

Elenoen, my
former estate, is the home of the eloim, my people.
We, a
race of beings more spiritual in nature than the inhabitants of
Earth, are now exiled from our natural home.
As I write
this, I am a creature of Earth.
I am flesh.

My people
are legion, but the few, of whom I am one, are now estranged.
Our parent has cast us out, and all eloim share a single parent:
El-oh-at.
Eloat, the Lord of Elenoen, Master of the Spheres;
father, mother, king, beloved, has disowned us.
Have we
transgressed in the manner of which we are accused?
Only
you, the reader, can pass judgment on us now.

Unlike this
green and fertile Earth, where all the creatures can conjoin in
their own fashion to bring forth young in great joy, there is only
ever one progenitor in our world.
But when certain cycles of
causality have revolved to their completion, our parent, Eloat,
will spawn a successor.
Only then may he pass through to his
next actuality, a new form of being in a different world.
For that is the way of the multiverse.

This then
was the rhythm of Elenoen, which had been maintained harmoniously
since before memory.
We, as trusting children, gave no
consideration to our estate.
We lived in Eternity.

Then, Eloat
spawned a son whose name was Sammael, and the time had come for the
transference of power, for a new cycle to begin, in Elenoen and on
Earth.
It was to have been a time of great celebration, of
feasting and love, as the old Eloat departed to new frontiers, with
the blessings of his people.

We enfolded
Sammael in our thoughts, preparing to elevate him to the position
of Eloat, but his predecessor faltered in the cadence of the
world.
For a moment, our father stepped out of the
multiversal rhythm and, in doing so, acquired the desire to remain
in Elenoen.

Eloat would
not transfer, but claimed the new cycle meant the old rhythm should
be destroyed.
Eloat would retain his power over eloim, with
Sammael sitting beneath him as his son.

Strange
influences seeped through to the Earth, for the multiversal rhythm
had been disrupted.
The Earth remembered war and began to
practice it.
Her races diverged and fought.
The
strength and energy that came back to Elenoen was sour and
bitter.
Sammael pleaded with Eloat to depart Elenoen, to
pass on, so that the multiverse rhythm could take on the new
intricacies it desired; the old ones were becoming stagnant and
breeding disharmony.
Eloat refused and, through supreme
effort, spawned another son for himself, whom he named Mikha’il.
This other son was to be his weapon in the world, a defence against
the demands of his first son, Sammael.

But Eloat
had underestimated the attraction two such similar beings would
have for one another.
At first, these brothers were in
accord, and loved each other dearly.
United, their power
eclipsed even that of their parent.
Mikha’il was loyal to
our father but, in love, he listened to the words of his brother,
Sammael, who was still committed to the cycle of the
multiverse.
Because of his youth, Sammael lacked the ability
to overthrow Eloat, and sought to petition Mikha’il to conjoin with
him, so that they might achieve what Sammael alone could not
do.

Angry at
their union, Eloat deceived Mikha’il into believing the sour energy
affecting Earth and Elenoen was caused deliberately by Sammael, and
that his influence should be destroyed for all time.
Sammael
was cast into the role of greedy aggressor, a creature craving
power and domination of his brethren.
Eloat instructed
Mikha’il to cast Sammael out of Elenoen into nothingness, where he
might bleat in vain, without power.
This division caused,
for the first time in eloim history, a war in Elenoen.
When
Mikha’il gathered his father’s throngs about him to carry out the
expulsion, many of the eloim - myself among them - supported
Sammael.
We did this because we loved him, and in our hearts
we trusted his word.

Were we
wrong to do this?
I sit here now, an outcast from my home,
having followed my Lord of Light, in the belief that his power,
guided by the natural flow of the multiverse, could overcome the
foul stagnation corrupting the essential forces of our
home.

When
Sammael was cast out, all eloim loyal to him were cast out with
him, although, with his strength, we resisted the pull of the void
of nothingness and succeeded in transferring to Earth.
In
his fury Eloat destroyed all the interfaces between the worlds,
condemning we the rebel eloim to remain on Earth for eternity.
Without access to the portals, we cannot pass through Elenoen to
our next phase of actuality.
We are trapped on Earth but,
even in our grief, determined to make the best of our
predicament.
We take comfort in the fact that our presence
on this world allows us to maintain its natural rhythm.
We
have lost our war, but so too have Eloat and Mikha’il.
There
are no victors in this conflict.