Chapter Twelve: Rites of Winter and Death
In the garden, leaves dripped from the trees and the chill breath of winter was immanent in the smoky mist of morning. Sinaclara said that a festival was approaching, one that was far older than the nameless god Shan had known in childhood. ‘It is the time of dark and of cold,’ she said, ‘when the fields are unyielding with frost, and life sleeps in the earth. During this time, the world dreams, and in her dreams, she relives the past. Images of the dead appear to those who are aware enough to perceive them.’
‘I know of this festival,’ Shan said. ‘In our village, we would put out saucers of blood and milk for the spirits. Girls would wear red ribbons in their hair and the lads red garters on their knees. On the night of the Grave, we’d build a bonfire on the green, and dance in a circle to keep the spirits at bay.’
‘These are old customs,’ said Sinaclara, ‘memories of older practices. In ancient times, the Night of the Grave was called Aya’even, which in the old tongue meant the feast of the dead. It is but one point on the great wheel of life, death and rebirth. Because of its associations with darkness and the dead, it has within it inherent hope, for without death, there cannot be life. This is why it is still celebrated by those who no longer remember its true meaning. The memory of that hope lives on.’
On the eve of Aya’even, Sinaclara told Shan she would take him into the forest. ‘There you might meet Lord Aya himself, for now you have eyes to see.’
Shan paused before saying, ‘And the spirits of the dead. Is it possible to see them on this night?’
Sinaclara eyed him for a moment, then nodded. ‘Yes, as creatures on the web of wyrd, it is our duty to lead stray spirits to their lord at this time.’
‘Is it possible to discover whether someone is yet in this world or the next?’
‘It is possible,’ said Sinaclara.
They went into the forest just before dusk, which now came earlier in the day. The sun’s descent painted the sky crimson and against it the branches of the trees looked black and stark. It was as if a vast fire burned beyond the wilderness, as if the world burned. Tendrils of mist seeped through the trees like astral fingers, feeling for the living. Black crows made a cacophony high overhead, the sound of madness, and it seemed to Shan as if the whole forest rustled and quivered with unseen running things that twittered and clicked just below his hearing.
Sinaclara led them to the trunk of an ancient oak and here they sat down among the groping roots. The Lady had a leather satchel with her, which now she opened. She took from it a flask and two cups of hard stitched leather. Shan would not have been surprised to learn they’d been fashioned from the skin of a man. ‘What are we drinking?’ he asked, knowing Sinaclara would offer him no ordinary brew.
She smiled and poured out two measures of a murky-looking fluid.
Shan told her about the day Gust had given him flowers to eat and how they had allowed him to see spirits - too many spirits, he recalled.
Still Sinaclara would offer no information about the contents of the cups, so Shan drank his draught, expecting fire, expecting bitterness, but all he tasted was earth. The flavour lingered in his mouth. It wasn’t pleasant. It tasted like grave dirt. Perhaps that was what it was.
Sinaclara sighed and leaned back against the pleated bark of the oak. Wood smoke combined with the early evening mist that rolled, cat-like, around the toes of the trees. Shan sat in silence beside her. He guessed the draught he had taken had narcotic properties. He could feel his mind flexing, as if new channels of thought were opening up. He felt he had aged ten years in the brief time he had been with Taropat and Sinaclara. How could so much have been crammed into a few short months? The person he’d been before was dead. Death. Tonight was its night. He exhaled, and his own breath seemed to smell of wood-smoke.
‘It is Lord Aya’s perfume,’ Sinaclara said. Her legs were stuck out straight before her, her palms upon her thighs. ‘He is drenched in it.’
Shan knew she meant the smoke. He said nothing.
With another sigh, the Lady got to her feet and held out her hand to Shan. ‘Come, we must go to the celebration.’
‘With other people?’ He’d thought this night was to be private.
‘Of course,’ Sinaclara answered. ‘A festival is not a festival unless there is a crowd to witness it.’
They walked along an avenue of rhododendrons, until they reached that strange part of the forest that Nip had called a hinterland. Although Shan could see nothing, he was very much aware of the burgeoning life around him, not in the hunched trees particularly, which appeared to be already dormant, but in the shadows between them: rustlings, crackings, the sound of breath. The ground mist was thicker here, and the presence of wood-smoke strong enough to make his eyes smart. Presently, Shan saw an amber glow through the trees ahead, and could hear a strangely hollow drumming sound. Sinclara led him from the hinterland, through a circle of ancient oaks and into a clearing, which was dominated by an immense bonfire. Sparks gushed up into the air from it, flaming petals. The fire roared hungrily. The wood that comprised it must have been very dry. Around the fire a group of figures was gathered. Some were throwing twigs into the flames, while others danced, slowly and sinuously. Yet more stood in small huddles, sipping from wooden bowls. To the side, three swarthy yet beautiful young men sat beside a long hollow log, which they were beating with sticks, creating complicated rhythms. To dance, you’d have to choose which theme to follow. The drummers’ hair hung in black rags over their chests, like head-dresses of crow feathers. ‘Who are these people?’ Shan asked.
Sinaclara let go of his hand. ‘Torozenti,’ she said. ‘Followers of the old way. They live nearby, in caves.’
‘In caves?’
Sinaclara shrugged. ‘They are very homely caves. They’ve been lived in for thousands of years. It’s a tradition.’
‘Are they magicians, witches?’
Sinaclara laughed. ‘They harvest the forest, they make boats for the river. But they follow the old ways. Magic is in their blood.’
By this time, the group had noticed newcomers in their midst and approached them. They appeared disappointingly ordinary, not that different from the villagers of Holme. ‘The Lady, the Lady,’ they sang.
An elderly woman sailed forward and offered Sinaclara a wooden bowl. ‘Drink from the pot, lady, drink.’
Sinaclara inclined her head and did so. ‘Greetings, Ama Maya. I thank you.’ The woman did not offer the vessel to Shan. He found it strange that nobody commented on his presence. They were not curious about him at all. Neither did Sinaclara attempt to introduce him. But despite this, Shan did not feel uncomfortable.
Ignoring Shan, Sinaclara began to talk with the Torozenti. Their conversation seemed no more than gossip. Shan stood to the side, looking round. He was mesmerised by the drummers, and even more so by the feral-looking girls who stamped and swayed to the rhythm of the drums. They were like dryads, tree spirits, dancing on a carpet of golden oak leaves. Their hair was twigs and russet foliage, their skin the tawny cream of the huge pale fungi that grew within the trunks of hollow trees. Women, he thought. Just the single word. He was sure he could smell their skin. Moss and loam and blood. If this is the night of death, why am I thinking of life? There was a sense of excitement in the air, collared with danger. The lithe movements of the young women hinted at contained frenzy. The furious colours of the flames behind them transformed them into shadowy, leaping elemental creatures, born of fire, of smoke.
Then, without Shan noticing the transition, all was quiet. The drummers sat glassy-eyed before their drums, panting silently. The dancing girls could not stop moving, but paced restlessly on soundless feet. Everyone else was forming a circle around the fire. Sinaclara took Shan’s hand and led him towards the flames. They were roaring furiously. Whole tree trunks cracked and spat in their midst. When Shan looked up at the sparks, he thought he saw twisting, leering creatures forming, decayin
g and reforming there, like exploding constellations.
Shan stood in the circle, conscious of the slinking females behind him, who circled the fire like lionesses, afraid of the heat, yet drawn to it.
The older woman, whom Sinaclara had called Ama Maya, stood some way to Shan’s left. She raised her arms to the sky, and for some moments stood in silent communion. Then she spoke. Her voice rang out, clearly audible over the hungry flames. ‘We meet here on the Night of the Dead, the Festival of Fire, the Cremation. We are gathered to bear witness to the Dance of the Dead, and to acknowledge its master, Lord Aya, who is Lord of the Dance, the Angel of Death, King of the Brimstone Fire.’
Everyone around the fire raised their arms, and cried out wordlessly. The girls who haunted the perimeter of the circle hissed like serpents.
When Ama Maya spoke again, her voice was low and hoarse, yet Shan could still hear every word. ‘Behold, the smoky veil is around us. The mist of the land is the veil between the worlds. Close your eyes. Listen for his footsteps. This is the realm of the dead. Listen for every sound: the howling of the wind spirits, the cackle of wood goblins, the murmurs of tree spirits. The trees are talking to each other, and on this might we understand their language. These are the sounds of wyrd, the sounds hidden within every shadow, and locked into the darkness of nature, the forest of the night. Only on this night do we truly hear them, for the creatures of wyrd perceive the coming of the Master of Shadows, the Walker Upon the Autumn Leaves.’
Ama Maya’s voice was like the wind in the trees. Shan could no longer understand her. She no longer spoke words. Something else. He felt himself drifting. His hands had gone numb. Then there was only wind, no voice at all.
Shan was immediately alert. His eyes snapped open. He was alone. Everyone had crept away. He turned round quickly and it seemed that shadowy shapes loped off on all fours into the trees. There was utter darkness beyond the light of the fire, despite the moonlight raying down from the hard clear sky. The ground in the clearing was carpeted with a thick blanket of golden leaves, and tendrils of mist writhed over it. Shan’s senses were acute. The frosty air in his nostrils was a rich banquet of the ripe smells of autumn; smoke and fruit and decay.
Where had everyone gone? Shan shivered. His ears strained to hear laughter, but there was none. His eyes strained to perceive movement in the trees, but there was none. Then, upon the path that led twisting into the darkness, Shan saw a tall figure. It was suddenly there, from nowhere. It had not approached in any conventional fashion. The figure seemed cloaked in dark mist and it was watching Shan intently. Shan stared back, his spine flexing with dread. The mist was clearing. He could see the figure was male, but not a man. His face was as pale as the fullest moon and his eyes burned like smouldering embers; the colour of autumn’s golden gown. His face was framed by a halo of flaming red hair, yet he did not have a mouth. Beneath his fierce eyes was only blankness. Shan felt his courage turn to a thin fluid, which ran down through his body, through every vein and artery, out through his feet and into the ground. He was witless with a gripping primordial horror. The Lord of the Dead had come for him. This was Lord Aya. He did not need a mouth to speak for the dead do not speak. The trident he held was the symbol of his kingship over the spirit world, but he could take souls with it.
Shan looked around himself in panic. A more rational part of his mind, the part that Sinaclara had spent so much time educating, told him that what he was seeing must be a vision inspired by the strange drink he’d taken, or else a trick. He wanted to believe the figure ahead of him was one of the Torozenti in costume. But the cold primal horror in his heart could not be denied. His magical training told him that what he saw was a discarnate entity.
Shan backed towards the fire, perhaps unconsciously seeking its protection against denizens of the night. But the flames suddenly roared out as if in an attempt to engulf him. Shan uttered a startled cry and leapt to the side, yet wherever he ran the flames snatched out to tease, goad and direct him. The whole clearing had become a mass of dancing fire. He was trapped.
The dark figure on the path raised his trident and pointed it towards Shan. Surrounded by flames, Shan sank to his knees. There was nothing he could do, nothing. He put his hands over his eyes, sure Lord Aya was gliding towards him, ready to pierce his heart with the three points of death.
‘Are you afraid, little man?’
The voice was not that of a dark lord, but a woman’s. Soft, gentle, full of humour. Shan raised his head, wondering if Sinaclara had come back to him, but the woman bending down to him was a stranger. She was not tall, yet gave the impression of immense height, dressed in different shades of green, a gown of rags and tassels, woven with leaves. Her hair was russet red, confined by a coronet of tiny red apples and the dried pods of plants and her face was long with slanting eyes. Inhuman. She seemed to emit an invisible light that eclipsed the frightening vision on the path behind her. Her beauty was terrifying, because of its inhumanity, yet Shan did not feel afraid of her.
‘Who are you?’ he asked her.
The woman smiled, and the parting of her lips released a breath that smelled of fruit, of corn lying wet with dew in the fields beneath moonlight. ‘I am she who adheres to his light and walks behind him in the realm between the underworld and the earth. He walks in silence upon the carpet of autumn mist. I am the music for his Dance of the Dead, the wind that sings and savages, the wind that haunts the living and gathers the dead. I am the Swarm of Wyrd. He is the sun that shines by night.’
Shan pressed his fingers briefly against his eyes. This could not be real. But when he lowered his hands once more the woman still leaned down to him, softly smiling. A luminous ether smoked off her skin, the essence of the season.
‘This is your night,’ said the Swarm of Wyrd. ‘You have a task to complete.’
She held out her hand and lifted Shan to his feet as if he was no heavier than thistle-down. He could do nothing but comply. She put her hands on his shoulders and made him turn to face the fire. Tongues of flame licked out, touching his skin, yet he could not flinch away. The Swarm’s grip was too firm.
‘Gaze upon this element,’ she said. ‘You will carry some of the fire with you when you leave this place. For leave, you must. On this night, the dead walk. In the forest of the night, they who are lost on the earthly plane wander and grieve. Your task is to gather up these souls and deliver them to the hands of Lord Aya.’
Shan shuddered. ‘Must I do this alone?’
The Swarm’s fingers flexed against his shoulders. ‘All those who would understand the ways of wyrd must tread this path. You must strengthen the light within you, for once it burns brightly, it will illumine your way forever. There is already a tiny flame within your heart. The same flame burns in every human breast. Can you feel it? Can you see it with your inner eye?’
Shan swallowed with difficulty. Yes, he could feel it. A glow inside him, a small flickering flame.
‘This light,’ said the Swarm, ‘is your protection against any evil spirit that walks abroad this night. It is this light you must use to guide the lost and the lonely to their Lord, for the restless spirits will recognise it. You must see it glowing golden within you like a candle flame.’
‘How will I guide the spirits?’ Shan glanced behind the Swarm and could still just perceive a shadowy outline with a flaming halo round its head, standing on the path to the forest.
The Swarm turned Shan to face her completely. ‘This is the realm of the dead, these woods around you. Can you see Lord Aya between the trees?’ She closed her eyes and smiled. ‘He watches us silently. He is with us now.’ She opened her eyes and looked down at Shan. ‘Go to him. Follow him as he walks abroad in the night. Go wherever he leads you. Go where you must. Listen for the cries of the dead, the call of an empty house or a lonely church. What ghosts will you encounter? What hopeless soul will cling to you for help? Go into the night and show them the way.’
‘But how?’
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‘Say to them “I am the light to guide you. Come with me.” You need not fear because Lord Aya is already with you.’
Shan was sure it would not be so simple. The forest of the dead. Not just of flesh, but thoughts, dreams and hopes. He knew instinctively that he would face the darkest parts of himself out there in the night with only the fearsome Lord Aya for company.
The fire, which had seemed so savage and threatening, was now difficult for Shan to leave. Here was warmth and light. Out there was only darkness. He realised then that he was alone by the fire. The Swarm had vanished. Perhaps she had never really been there. On the path to the darkness, Lord Aya stood tall and menacing. He raised his trident once more and Shan knew he must follow.
As soon as he began to walk forward, the Lord of the Dead turned in a cloud of inky cloak and began to stride away. Shan ran to catch up, but Lord Aya always remained the same distance ahead, only the brightness of his flaming hair indicating where he was between the trees.
Shan knew how vast the forest was, and how easy it would be to become lost in it. Yet even before he’d caught sight of anything that resembled a spirit, he came out of the trees and found himself on a hill-top, above a moonlit valley, where a sleepy silver river ran. Villages and farms huddled around the banks of the river, while at a further distance from the water, Shan saw big old houses and churches. Lord Aya was walking down the slope ahead of him. Shan followed. He heard a sound and looked down, to see a face distorted by fear looking up at him from the earth. He stopped walking immediately, and two hands scrabbled up to reach for him, dripping crumbs of soil. Without thinking, Shan said, ‘I am the light to guide you. Come with me.’ He reached out to take hold of one of the insubstantial hands, intending to haul the spirit out of the ground, but there was no need. A thin, spiralling wisp of blue-white smoke streaked past him and flew towards Lord Aya.
Spirits came to him, exuding from the trunks of trees, flying as vapour in the air. He could reach out, say the charmed words, and feel a great sense of relief and joy as the entity was released into Lord Aya’s care. This was no trial; this was rewarding and comforting. The landscape slept in peace, while he, as a saviour of the dead, walked like a wraith himself beneath the shadows of the trees.