‘I can’t help but get annoyed when you so obviously enjoy mystifying me,’ I said. ‘I don’t believe you know anything more about the Strangeling than I do!’ That was a lie, but I hoped to provoke him.
‘You might be right...’ he said, and then pointed across the smoke of our fire. ‘What’s that?’
There was a crouching shape in the shadows. Realising they had been noticed, a shabby figure scuttled out of a veil of roots and into the meagre light of our flames. My hand shot to my belt where I kept my knife, but Keea made no move other than to drag a package out of my carryback. Our visitor was nothing more terrifying than a gnomish old woman; spry as a goat. She peered at us fearlessly through a tangle of greasy hair. I relaxed and folded my arms.
‘Wisdom I have to give!’ announced the hag, squinting sideways at the package of meat Keea was unwrapping.
I suspected she only wanted food from us, but was prepared to go along with her claim. ‘What wisdom can you give us, mother?’ I asked cheerfully.
‘More’n the dead can,’ she said sharply, and I shivered involuntarily.
‘The dead can be quite informative,’ Keea said reasonably, spitting the last of our meat. I noticed he had cut the meat into three strips; a fact which I’m sure did not escape the old woman either.
The woman nodded. ‘Aye, boy, you’re clear-seein’, it’s true!’ She shuffled towards me and held out a begrimed hand, thick with rings, all of which were crusty and seemed to have become part of her flesh. I squeezed it briefly. At close quarters, the woman smelled undeniably rank.
‘I am Isis Urania,’ she said, nodding. ‘I suppose you know me.’
‘Well, I think I may have heard of you,’ I replied, catching Keea’s eye and smiling. Isis and Urania were the names of old goddesses from two very different cultures.
‘Most have, most have,’ the hag said, shaking her head and sighing deeply. ‘I yearn for privacy, but they won’t let me be. It’s my hands, you see, and my eyes. They’re needed.’ Fame was clearly a great burden to her.
‘You have sons, don’t you?’ Keea said sweetly. ‘Are they well?’
Isis pulled a frown. ‘Yes. Apollo and Loki, my little devils!’ She waved a finger at Keea and said to me, brightly, ‘Sons are always a problem, aren’t they!’
Keea snorted a laugh.
‘I wouldn’t know, I’m afraid,’ I said, more offended than I would have liked to be. ‘I have no children.’ The journey must really have taken it out of me! The fact that Keea and I had very different skin colours seemed to have escaped the hag.
‘You are a lucky woman, then,’ she said, and sat down on a rock between us. ‘Well, I have news for you people!’ She slapped her parted thighs, between which the remains of a long, turquoise robe hung in rags. ‘The Knights are abroad, riding the roads of Khalt in their cloaks and hats. Fearsome, eh? But you’ve nought to fear from ‘em. Good boys, good boys, eyes like sun-hawks’ eyes. Get me?’ She tapped my knee with bunched knuckles. ‘Don’t have to be afraid of the pretty one, my dear. She won’t hurt you. Neither will he.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand you.’
Isis tutted and rolled her eyes. ‘She’s not a nightmare, she’s a dream, a dream!’ she exclaimed and then, rubbing her hands together, licked her lips and said, ‘Meat’s about ready, sonny. Hand her over. Like it rare, I do.’
The old woman seemed to think we all shared some deeply interesting secret. Her words implied she knew something of what we’d seen on the road, but I was prepared to dismiss this as coincidence. So many strange things were happening in Khalt, it was likely Isis had picked up information from other travellers who’d had similar experiences to our own.
Isis had finished gobbling her meat by the time Keea and I were ready to eat ours. She exhibited no interest in the wild salad Keea offered her. Admittedly, it was rather limp. ‘You’re only a day’s hike from Ykhey,’ Isis said, nodding, and licking grease from her chin. ‘Used to be Ykhey, anyways, the Holy City, it was. Now...’ She shrugged. ‘Some call it Taynah; a place of terrible destruction. You are going to Ykhey!’
‘Are we?’ I raised my eyebrows at Keea in inquiry.
He shrugged. ‘It is in the west. We will be heading that way.’
I felt quite sure that, despite his denial, he had been here before. Had it been a lucky guess that Isis had sons? Isis the goddess had them, of course. Or was Isis Urania someone he knew, or had at least met before? I watched him as he sat beside the fire, listening to the old woman’s prattle. He was smiling in that particularly irritating way, which usually signified - to me anyway - he was nursing secrets. I realised that if I believed I had come to know him, I was wrong.
‘So,’ I said, offering Isis the fat off my meat, which she accepted greedily. ‘What can you tell us that the dead can’t? And who is the pretty one you referred to who won’t hurt me?’
Isis squinted at me. ‘Concerning your first question, lady, you have asked the wrong one. As for the second, she is the person you fear and love, whose image you carry in your thoughts.’
‘I see... May I reword my first question?’
Isis inclined her head. ‘You have only to ask.’
‘What is it that causes the dead to walk around? Are they really dead?’
Isis cackled. ‘They walk to seek oblivion. They are dead in one sense, but not in another. They have been partially supped.’
‘Partially supped? What do you mean?’
‘The host treats them cruelly now, very cruel.’ She shook her head sadly.
‘The Host of Helat? Is that who you mean? What are they?’
She extended her arms. ‘This was theirs; all this. We took it away from them.’
‘The Host of Helat lived in the Strangeling? I have seen paintings of these people in a temple on the Kahra Flats. The pictures seemed to indicate all the Host were destroyed.’
‘No, not destroyed.’ Isis tapped her beaky nose. ‘There is the Host, and there is the Host, and there is yet another Host not of this world. It is very perplexin’.’
I touched her arm and spoke gently. ‘Can you explain it to me? It’s really important that I understand.’
‘She has to know everything,’ Keea drawled and grinned at me. ‘Don’t you, Rayo?’
I ignored him, and then recounted my thoughts upon everything I had so far encountered. Isis listened carefully. ‘The nomads of Khalt worship Helat and have legends concerning the Host, who instigate the Holy Death. There are pictorial records in the Sink, which show the Host being born and then mingling with humanity; teaching them and preying off them. That could be a metaphor for a race arriving on this continent from somewhere else; a race with strange ways of behaviour, to say the least, but who were very intelligent, far more advanced than the ancient Khalts. Now, Isis, you’re telling me that the Strangeling was their country. They were real people, and they were nearly destroyed. Because of the way they preyed?’
Isis nodded, eyes narrowed. ‘People got the knowledge they needed and then turned on the Host. But they couldn’t kill the light of ‘em, oh no, couldn’t do it. Always glowin’, always, like the sky, see?’
I was beginning to feel excited, similar to how I felt when I successfully identified a soulscape problem. It might be that the answer to the mystery was a simple one - unlikely, but simple. ‘Isis, you mentioned that the walking dead are - what was it? - oh, yes, “partially supped”. By that, do you mean the Host have preyed on them, but not killed them?’
Isis put back her head and glared at me down her nose, her eyes nearly closed. I could see the wet gleam between her wrinkled lids. ‘Supped, violated, but not to death. They can make all manner of things happen.’
‘So it’s the Host causing the phenomena in Khalt then!’ I cried ‘Is that right Isis? Is it?’
Isis looked almost frightened by my urgency. She shrugged. ‘Can make all manner of things happen,’ she repeated.
‘But why now?’ I asked
, addressing Keea. ‘The Strangeling has existed for centuries, if not far longer. Why should these people begin appearing again now? That is the puzzle!’
Keea’s face was devoid of expression.
‘This could be it, Keea! Don’t you see? It makes sense, doesn’t it? Survivors of this ancient race might have been hiding here in the Strangeling. Now, for whatever reason, it’s possible they’ve become active beyond the boundary. All I have to discover is how they do the things they do. They must have an ability to direct human will power and thought; a very strong ability. But it’s not impossible. It is an answer. Why have they hidden themselves for so long? Keea, we have to find one of these Host people!’ I turned excitedly to Isis. ’Will I find any here in the Strangeling? If so, where?’
‘If they want you to find them, they’ll find you,’ Isis replied, rather stiffly.
I was jubilant. Q’orveh and his people had been nearer the truth than I had given them credit for. If only I hadn’t been so scathing of their legends. Perhaps I could have learned more from them than I thought. Another idea came to me.
‘Isis, the riders on the road, the ones you called the Knights. Are they members of the Host?’
‘They are creatures of the Host,’ Isis said.
Then I had already met one! This was incredible. Maybe these ‘Knights’ were the ones precipitating all the strange events. I patted the old woman’s hand warmly. ‘You have given me more than I could have wished for. Thank you for your wisdom.’
She inclined her head in a regal manner. ‘Your meat was very good,’ she said. ‘Thank you. Now, no more talking, I must leave you.’
Before I could protest, she stood up, made a hurried genuflection of blessing in our direction, advised us to bind the inside of our boots with vine leaves to repel ‘earth sniffers’, and wished us the luck of the gods. Then, she vanished quickly through the root fronds.
‘Well?’ I said to Keea, triumphantly.
‘I expect there are many like her in this place,’ he said. ’Don’t you? Quite mad.’
‘Mad? Don’t be ridiculous! She told us some amazingly useful information.’ I had a feeling Keea was annoyed Isis had spoken to me, but then he hadn’t tried to silence her either.
‘She’s a seeress,’ he said, caustically. ‘Or perhaps even a goddess, although I don’t think a goddess would be so careless about her appearance, do you?’
‘Keea, she knew about me! It was as if she knew what I wanted to hear.’
He shrugged in an intensely irritating manner. ‘Precisely. Think about it, Rayo. The woman can obviously read ethers and auras. She could have picked up the information from your own mind.’
I snorted sarcastically. ‘Oh please! I don’t believe anyone can be so adept at reading minds without the benefit of a scry-fume. She’s just an old vagabond, senile.’
Keea sighed, rolling his eyes in what looked like exasperated patience. ‘She didn’t tell you anything, Rayo, think about it. You perhaps told her all she needed to know, rather than the other way around.’
‘You are being deliberately disparaging!’
‘You are a very vain woman, Rayojini! Why do you think I spend my entire time thinking up conundrums to perplex you? I have better things to think about.’
‘Such as?’
He shrugged.
‘What is going on in your head, Keea?’ I asked. ‘My deductions have not impressed you at all, which only leads me to think that you know everything already.’
Keea opened his mouth to speak, but suddenly a horse snorted right behind us. Keea turned round quickly. Without waiting for him, I leapt up and fought my way through the concealing root-fronds. I ran out into the rubble-strewn street. A horse! A Knight! But there was nothing there.
Disappointed, I went back to the fire, and discovered that Keea had gone into his tent and tied the flaps tightly against me. For a while, I wrapped myself in a blanket and sat next to the dying embers. In the distance, I could hear singing, faint music. It sounded like people welcoming in a harvest. Eventually, with images and ideas swirling round my brain, I slept where I was sitting.
Section Five
Rayojini
‘…then bursting forth afresh with conscious terrors vex me round, that rest or intermission none I find.’
Paradise Lost, Book II
I was deliberately silent with Keea the next morning. He made no effort to cajole me. After we had eaten and packed away our things, we started walking towards the west once more. We found the wide road we had followed, and walked away from the town of vines and ferns. We did not see any sign of life, although it was not long past dawn, so perhaps no one was awake at that hour. I was feeling stiff and disagreeable, haunted by a dream I had had about my mother. She had expressed disappointment in me.
‘You walked right past the answers,’ she’d said. ‘You wasted your opportunities.’
In my dreams, I was whipping myself for not having worked out the puzzle sooner. One thing was certain; I’d have to try and gather more evidence of the existence of the Host before I could present my theories to the guild leaders in Taparak. This eventually prompted me to break the silence with Keea.
‘So where do we begin looking?’ I asked him.
He pretended he’d been deep in thought, and took a few seconds to answer me. ‘Looking for what?’ he said. We’d left the ruined town and now walked along a stretch of road that was flanked by fields of corn, which had run wild. Large villa-farms could be seen in the valleys beyond. They were some distance from the road, but as it had been built on a raised embankment, we were able to see for quite a way.
‘The Host,’ I said.
Keea gave me a hard look. ‘Are you serious?’ His voice was thorned with sarcasm.
‘Of course. The next time we catch sight of one of those Knight people, we’re going to confront them.’
‘We?’ He laughed. ‘You’re crazy! You’ll get yourself killed! Look what happened last time you spoke to one of those creatures.’
‘They are not creatures, Keea,’ I said pompously. ‘They are men. Calling them creatures merely assists them to intimidate you. I have more information about them now, so therefore feel better equipped to deal with them.’
‘I can’t stop you doing anything,’ Keea said, ‘but would still advise you to consult the libraries in Sacramante first. I don’t think you - or I - have enough information yet to go barging in and asking questions around here. If your theories, and Isis’ information, are correct, we could be running the risk of offending some very dangerous characters.’
Much as I itched to take some kind of action, I had to concur with much of what Keea had said. One woman and one boy would have little defence against attack, especially in unknown territory where we had no safe boltholes. Still, if we came across a lone rider, I would definitely try and speak to them. If Keea was so worried about the idea of that, he could hide while I was doing it! ‘Well, perhaps you are right,’ I said, making a great show of how grudgingly I spoke the words.
Keea seemed relieved. I smiled to myself and adjusted my carryback.
As we walked on in silence, I wondered about what I should do when we reached Sacramante. Before I could continue my investigations there, I would have to sort out how I was going to support myself. Lodgings were expensive in the city; I might need to find work for a while. Somehow, I would have to persuade Keea to introduce me to his employers, and also to show me the libraries he had spoken of. In view of his recent behaviour I would not be surprised if, once we reached the city, he abandoned me.
I realised I might need patronage while I was in Sacramante, which prompted me to think about the Tricantes. Could I seek sanction from them after all this time? The Sacramantans were generous when it came to people they considered to be artisans of one form or another. Luckily, soulscapers were included in this category. Seeking work in Sacramante was regarded with a narrow eye in Taparak, mainly because, despite the Bochanegran wealth we could take back to the table m
ountain, any time spent in Sacramante was nothing more than a holiday; work was incidental. Soulscapers had a tendency to linger there spending their earnings long after their commissions were finished. Also, as in Atruriey, Sacramantans rarely succumbed to the Fear. It was difficult for the Tappish to work out why this was so, but then we did not really know what caused the Fear in the first place. Any attempt to study the Sacramantans was politely but firmly discouraged. A friend had once said to me that the Sacramantans went out of their way to addle visiting soulscapers with liquor, just to prevent any covert examination. I tried to remember whether this had been so when Ushas and I had been there. Still, unless commissioned, a soulscaper had to look really hard to find work in Sacramante, although the Bochanegrans would heap a person with rewards for the most trivial of tasks. On one occasion, so it is recorded, a soulscaper did nothing more than supervise the delivery of a litter of kittens from a favourite cat, yet she received more payment than one could expect from healing the son of a royal house of Lansaal. It was only a legend, perhaps.
More immediately, I would have to concern myself with trying to track down a member of the Host. The Strangeling was a narrow country, and we would cross it swiftly. Should I ignore Keea’s forebodings and linger here, take time to explore? I wondered whether my assumptions about the Host were correct. Had I merely dreamed up an improbable solution to the puzzle, which was only the product of a lively imagination? I felt Keea wanted me to think that. Still, there was no point in rushing to conclusions; I must wait and observe.
By mid-day, we had left the farmland behind, and came to a place where overgrown ruins stretched to either side of us - perhaps the suburbs of an ancient city. The road was lined by tall columns, many of which were broken, supporting statues of various gods or important personages. I thought I recognised some of the gods from the soulscape. With little concentration, I fancied I could detect the images of ancient chariots that had once thundered up and down this highway. Clustering between the magnificent columns, and close to the road itself, were ramshackle dwellings, constructed of rag and wood and other, less easily identifiable, materials. This was a tableau rich in symbolism; past glory, present abjection. As we progressed along the road, the community that flanked it woke up and surged out into the day. They were the poorest, grubbiest people I had ever seen, and yet, despite their obvious poverty, they were not at all melancholy or apathetic. They burgeoned like a colony of ants in the gargantuan skeleton of the past, sifting rubbish, recycling everything, conjuring a new art from the bones. We discovered that, unlike the retiring inhabitants of the vine-clad town, they were very gregarious folk. A few individuals attached themselves to us and followed us, offering various wares; fortune-telling services, a map to buried relics, a tour of the ghosts of the area and, quite often, cooked meat. All of these delights, we prudently declined to accept, which the people took in good part, merely thinking up grander temptations to offer us instead.