As I prepared my mixes, I told Keea about Mouraf’s son in Yf. ‘You see, this may be the same. Think, Keea: do you really believe a dead body can walk around among the living? It’s preposterous!’
My exclamation seemed to mollify him a little. I was pleased about the way the balance of power had changed. Since I had met him on the road, Keea had seemed much stronger than I. I’d not been happy about that and welcomed this chance to reassert myself - and not just in his eyes.
He watched me moodily, hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets. ‘How do you know the scry mix will affect them? They look too far gone for that.’
‘It affects anyone; therefore, you should move away from the smoke.’ I paused. ‘I may need you.’
‘You are not wholly confident then, are you,’ he said, with a certain tone of triumph in his voice.
‘Only a fool would not take some precaution,’ I replied. ‘But the risk will be worth it. Think what we could learn.’
‘What did you learn from the boy in Yf?’
‘I’ve seen and heard a lot since then. Now, move back.’
I positioned my charcoal holder in front of the motionless figure and sprinkled it with a generous pinch of scaping-mix. Keea backed off reluctantly and went into his tent.
The pungent fume odour swelled around me, bringing a thousand comforting memories of Taparak, and soon eclipsed the foul stink of the stranger before me. I arranged myself into the habitual cross-legged position and took long, deep breaths. Before the fume took effect, I made an objective study of the face in front of me. The muscles were slack, the skin mottled. One cheek seemed pushed inwards, as if the person had been lying on a hard surface, and the flesh had not sprung back to its usual shape. Bodily functions were clearly running down, and I was amazed it could still actually move about. As the thick, grey smoke surrounded us, the figure’s left hand twitched a little and, through the fug, I saw its mouth tremble. These signs were reassuring. I crooned a few comforting words - they may have been of some help - and concentrated on leaving one reality for another.
A regular pinch of scry-mix produces a fume of perhaps ten minutes duration, which is enough to affect both a soulscaper and their client sufficiently for scape-sharing to occur. A trained soulscaper can ‘step back’ into normal reality at any time, an aspect of my training for which I was soon destined to feel particularly grateful.
As usual, I became aware of the consensual soulscape taking shape around me, and prepared to enter the individual scape of our peculiar guest. The soulscape scenario around me was shimmering oddly, as if in a heat haze. I could not see very well, and there was no immediate sign of the stranger’s presence. This was most unusual, but I had expected something out of the ordinary, so was not too concerned at first. I instructed my body to reach out, in reality, and touch the sick person in front of me. This might facilitate soulscape contact. I was totally unprepared for what occurred. The minute my flesh touched the cold meat, I was engulfed, in the soulscape, by a great, icy cloud, a thick, grey fog that was tinged with a sickly, putrid yellow and which stank of corrupted flesh. It was a far stronger stench than that of the sick stranger’s physical body. I sensed my own body gagging, although my soulscape form was unaffected in that way.
Then, I noticed movement in the fog. Collecting myself, visualising a core of sustaining light within me, I summoned whatever lurked there towards me.
It was the eyes I saw first. Pitiful, yet empty, they were the only aspect of the shambling figure approaching me that retained any semblance of normality. The thing was a stray thought form trapped into a disintegrating shape, which was decomposing even as I looked at it. Tatters of flesh ran, semi-liquid, from spongy bones. One thighbone had departed company from the hip, attached only by stretched rags of flesh. The face was an indescribable horror, features melting from the skull. And I had summoned this thing towards me! I backed away, my soulscape form now experiencing the stench - which was spiritual more than anything - and beginning to lose its cohesion. It seemed as if this dreadful creature was contaminating the soulscape as it struggled forward. It was like a disease eating at the substance of the inner world; it should not, under any circumstances, be allowed to remain there.
I had to claw my strength back to me, strain to regenerate my flame of protection but, thank Helat, again my training did not let me down. Visualising an enormous wave of pure, cleansing water rising up around me, I projected it as forcefully as I could at the yellow-grey fog and the foulness it surrounded. Testing my belief to the extreme, I convinced myself the water was destroying the fog and the stumbling monster. Again and again, I fashioned this elemental weapon and hurled it forth, becoming almost hysterical, so that I was creating tidal waves and throwing them out for several minutes after I needed to. Eventually, I realised the soulscape was clean - steaming, but clean - and I directed the water to sink into the ground. My work was over.
The procedure had not been as dangerous as Keea had feared, but neither had it been as informative as I had desired. Utterly drained of strength, I forced myself back to conscious awareness. My nose was full of a disgusting stink, and I vomited copiously into the grass. I could not bear to look at the thing in front of me, and got shakily to my feet, averting my eyes.
Keea had come out of his tent, and was waiting anxiously just beyond the perfume of the smoke. I had only been in the soulscape for a few minutes, because the smoke was still potent. I looked at Keea steadily for a couple of seconds, and then wiped my mouth. He did not speak, but watched me as I scattered the fume mix and damped the smoke with handfuls of grass, holding my breath the entire time. I did not want to be aware of the soulscape just then, even though the contamination had been successfully dispelled. I kicked the ashes and made a gesture with my hand, signifying to Keea that it was safe for him to approach. He came and took my forearms in his hands, peering into my face, his eyes full of concern. At that moment, we were utterly in accord.
My mouth felt thick. It was hard to speak, but somehow I got the words out: ‘Burn it!’
He did not ask me what I had seen, nor could I have spoken of the foulness I had encountered in that poor creature’s soulscape. In fact, it had not really been a soulscape at all, but only the reflection of a memory, haunted by a confused fragment of deteriorating consciousness.
Keea carried out the grisly deed while I packed away our things. Afterwards, we fled from that place and, from that moment on, every movement in the grass beside the road had both of us jumping in alarm. At any moment we expected to come across another ragged remnant of humanity that the nomads had, quite rightly as it turned out, dubbed the walking dead. I was relieved to find that I felt a lot better, my mind did not seem so strained and fearful. This, I think, was simply because I now knew the strange, conflicting feelings I’d been having, the presentiment of weirdness, were real and outside of myself. Before, I had not been sure.
After the encounter with the dead thing, I noticed that Keea began to meditate for up to an hour at a time, once every few days, at sunfall. He shut himself away in his tent, tying its entrance flaps together firmly, so I could not glimpse what went on inside. Afterwards, he would seem tired and irritable, and refused to answer my questions.
Several times, we caught sight of the mysterious riders in the distance. On one occasion, we were trailed for nearly an hour, but we were never accosted. Keea tried, unsuccessfully, to hide how much these figures worried him; I noticed his jumpy unease whenever we saw one. I asked him if he knew who the riders were, but all he would say is that he believed they came from the Strangeling.
‘And the person who employs you, do they come from the Strangeling too?’ I asked.
‘I can’t tell you about them,’ he answered.
‘You are anxious to reach the Strangeling. Is that the place where we will learn the truth? Does everything come from there?’
‘Wait and see.’
He was so impenetrable. At times, it drove me to distraction and once I had to physically restrai
n myself from striking him. ‘Tell me what you know, Keea.’
‘In time you’ll know it too.’
He would never tell me.
Section Four
Rayojini
‘So strange thy outcry, and thy words so strange…’
Paradise Lost, Book II
Before a traveller passes onto Bochanegran soil, the fertile plains of Khalt diminish into the bizarre landscape known as the Strangeling. I had never visited it before, although I had heard much about it from other soulscapers. Legends told us that the Strangeling had once been a collection of thriving and affluent small kingdoms which, at some distant point, had become involved in an unusually extensive conflict with another country; a war that the Strangeling kingdoms had lost dramatically. The victors of this war had obviously attempted to erase all evidence of the race they had vanquished, for no information remained in any library I had visited, or even within the oral tradition of other races, concerning the civilisation that had existed there. The old kingdoms of the Strangeling, however, were not the only ones to suffer such expunction from human history. In primitive times, it had not been unusual for warmongers to put all the surviving conquered, including civilians, to the sword. Some of the ancient Delta Kings had been fanatical about how certain races, whose philosophies and religions were widely different from their own, were so abhorrent to them that it was nothing more than a Deltan duty to obliterate their genetic lines. There had been special phalanxes within the Deltan army whose sole purpose had been to march in after a war was over and clean up, by methodically scouring the land and butchering any natives they came across. At first, I had believed this to be an exaggeration, but the records were so cold-bloodedly descriptive of these acts, and full of such detail, I had eventually (and reluctantly, because the ancient Deltans were my ancestors) acknowledged it as fact. Nowadays, the Deltans were embarrassed about this aspect of their history, and treated such records with a kind of whimsical unease. As part of my initial training, I had spent time studying the Deltan archives in Ahmana, and was therefore familiar with much of their history. Deltan records, however, did not mention the Strangeling specifically, although the extent of its devastation would suggest Deltan interference, but the country would undoubtedly have been known by a different name in the past.
Whereas other countries had recovered from earlier ravagement, the Strangeling had never resumed its former glory. Perhaps that was why it had been dubbed the Strangeling; it was strange. Now, it was nothing more than a vast wilderness of ruins and ancient highways, most of which had been over-run by the forces of nature. A great and impenetrable intensity of superstitious fear seemed to have prevented anyone - Deltans included, oddly enough - from reclaiming and utilising this land. There were stories of enterprising agricultural pioneers who had set up farming homesteads, but these people had become absorbed by the peculiarities of the area they had come to inhabit. It was said they had descended into primitive ways and shunned the civilisation they had left behind. In some places, the remains of towns still stood, although they were badly dilapidated. Over the years, they had become occupied by people who had either been expelled from more civilised areas, or who had just wandered there of their own accord and taken root. Tappish records suggested that the Strangeling was inhabited by rogues, degenerate nomad tribes, and misfits of all types. It was reported that inbreeding had resulted in mutant lineages, but whoever had compiled the information was clearly sceptical about this, because no specific details were given. The natives of the Strangeling were rarely described as being hostile, but there was evidence to suggest that some of them were cannibal, in support of some bizarre religion or another. Although there was no hard proof that they killed and ate strangers, any soulscaper travelling through the area was advised not to consume any food they might be offered by natives.
The boundary between the Kahra Flats and the Strangeling is very narrow. Some say that it is possible to experience a physical sensation of weirdness as one’s feet pass over it, a tingling tremor in the muscles of the legs. If such a phenomenon does occur, I am sure it is merely generated by the imagination rather than any real power in the land. The imagination is definitely encouraged to excesses by the fetishes erected by Strangeling inhabitants among the rocks beside the road. We saw wooden poles, painstakingly polished and carved, topped by the bleached skulls of large birds, given painted stones for eyes and crowned with hanks of (what we hoped) was horsehair. In other places, poppets of rag and straw, fashioned in the semblance of men and women, wore deer’s antlers on their foreheads, or sprouting from their chests.
Keea and I reached the boundary in the early evening. Before us, immense boulders formed a natural barrier between Khalt and the Strangeling lands, some of which were carefully painted with pictorial warnings: travellers being murdered in their sleep by beast men and other sweet delights. Neither Keea nor I considered it a good idea to make the crossing so late in the day. Laughing nervously about possible hazards, we set up camp among a tumble of rocks, erecting our tents very close together. We hardly slept, and during the night we sat together, listening to strange calls coming from the west that might have been human or animal in origin. In the morning (both of us relieved that nothing unusual had occurred during the dark hours) we set off once more. The next night would be spent upon dangerous ground.
Bearing in mind all that I had learned about the place, I had prepared myself for a bleak and depressing panorama, and the possibility of hazardous encounters. What we did find filled me with awe and, despite the depredations of time and dissolution, I fell in love with the Strangeling after very short acquaintance. It is a land of the dead, yes, but the memory of their lives lingers on in the fantastic faded lines of their roads and towns. Much art has been left behind, which the present inhabitants, for all their imputed derangement, hold precious and have not destroyed.
After a few hours’ scrambling over an uninhabited rocky area, we found an old road heading west. Both Keea and I were alert for the presence of hidden strangers, but it seemed that no one was about. Cold, morning light came down through the reddening foliage of tall trees beside the road, the surface of which was a beautiful carpet of gold and crimson leaves. We walked past a broken tower, whose dark entrance was guarded by the crumbled and dismembered statue of a huge stern god, who had undoubtedly once perched atop the tower. Later, we walked between three pairs of lichened stone lions, whose broad ancient backs were saddled in bright fallen leaves. The lions pulled snarling and argumentative faces at one another across the road. It was a dispute that had been maintained for centuries. Nearby, among the trees, was the haunted facade of a ruined villa. Deer stood in the gaping windows, pulling, with delicate lips, leaves from the creepers that shrouded the roofless walls. They did not scatter as we passed them.
‘This place is nothing like I imagined,’ I said. ‘It’s so peaceful, so beautiful, so lush!’
‘The land can be grateful humankind has not come to spoil it,’ Keea said, in a cynical way. I supposed he rather liked the place too.
By late afternoon, we discovered that the road we were following led to the ruin of an old town. At first, I thought the place was made of some fabulous crimson metal, for the low beams of the sinking sun seemed to reflect a metallic gleam. Then, as we grew nearer, I could see that the ruins had been overtaken completely by vines, whose fading leaves were shiny and small, clinging like fish-scale armour to what remained of the buildings. In this place, we encountered our first Strangeling natives.
It was clear that the ruins were occupied, for many small fires were burning among the rubble and inside some of the less ruined and therefore more habitable buildings. We noticed dark shapes flit nervously away from us. If the natives were timid and afraid of us, all the better: it was preferable to being attacked or harangued. We walked up and down what remained of the streets for a while, both of us enchanted by what we saw. Where the ruins were not blanketed by the shiny vines, they were bursting with massive ferns
, whose fronds must have been well over ten feet long. Bright blue birds nested among the ferns and chattered to each other in shrill voices. In some places, fern-fronds reaching out across the street, from high positions, had met and become entwined, creating a canopy from which long aerial roots dangled in feathery curtains.
Eventually, we chose a place in which to shelter for the night, in the lee of a half-crumbled wall, surrounded by root-curtains. I collected dead fern fronds to build a fire, while Keea sorted through what remained of our provisions to make a meal.
‘Have you been here before?’ I asked him, dumping an armload of fronds in front of him.
‘No, have you?’
‘You know I haven’t. I can’t understand why people are so nervous of this place.’
‘Some ancient legends tend to leave a lingering smell,’ Keea said.
‘There are very few ancient legends about the Strangeling actually,’ I said. ‘All the ones I’ve come across are fairly recent. There are no historical records for this area.’
‘There are, if you know where to look,’ Keea replied, and smiled up at me. ‘Where’s your tinder?’
I found it for him. ‘What do you know about this place, then?’ He was concentrating on getting the fire alight, and I doubted whether he would answer me properly.
‘What do I know? Well, it was once a great and powerful civilisation.’
‘That much everyone knows! What else?’ I helped him feed the flames.
‘It is a holy place. It’s protected. That’s why only certain people can live here.’ He beamed at me again. ‘Under different circumstances, you might feel very uncomfortable here.’
‘What different circumstances?’
He shrugged. ‘If you were alone, perhaps.’
‘All right, I understand. Only crazy people can bear the ghosts of this place. And I have gone crazy to travel with you!’
‘You get so annoyed when you don’t know things, Rayo. Why not accept there are always going to be things you can’t know, or understand.’