Isis’ prediction concerning the distance we would have to travel to reach Ykhey was indeed accurate. By late afternoon, we were approaching the city walls; more remained of them than I would have thought possible. Perhaps they had been repaired over the years. Ykhey was a colossal place. It would take us at least another day to cross its ruins. The highway too was in better repair near the city. People dressed in tarnished silks rode mules up and down it, throwing coins to the most persistent of the hut dwellers who had followed us this far. It seemed obvious that Ykhey had some kind of social structure. It must also be a rich area for lucky finds, because many of the natives carried unbelievable treasures. I saw women wearing great golden crowns that were thick, in a rude, abundant way, with crudely cut gems. I saw children dressed in gaily-coloured rags weighed down with heavy chains of gold around their necks, their skinny arms sleeved in glittering bangles. People displayed these filched riches without shame, and seemingly without fear of theft. Perhaps there was so much of this forgotten treasure lying around for anyone to pick up, no-one had to steal, but it did make me wonder why merchant trains from the east had not come to claim some of this booty which could be sold for high profit beyond Khalt.
My amazement caused me to break my silence with Keea. ‘Just look at all this stuff!’ I exclaimed. ‘Why is it still here?’
‘This is the soulscape of the past,’ he replied. ‘Remember that. It is only the ghost of a consensual archetype.’
‘Of course!’ I said. I was impatient with his ridiculous attempt to utilise my own terminology, and could not be bothered to argue with him. If what Isis had said was correct, this had once been the Holy City of the Host. I stared up at the walls as we approached; they were covered in carvings, in a style that again suggested Deltan influence. Now, however, I wondered if perhaps this was not the art that had originally inspired the Deltans, rather than vice versa.
The road led right through a massive gateway. There were no longer any gates attached, but it was unlikely these people had a need for them anyway. Would I recognise a member of the Host if I saw one? As we walked under the great arch, a crowd of women and boys, dressed in stained and ragged silks, with bangles of gold around their ankles and wrists, came running out from the shadows in a twittering crowd. They banged tambourines and whirled around us, offering us delights of the flesh and the inevitable telling of fortunes. I felt heady in the swirl of colour; skirts of deep red, emerald green, peacock blue, the glint of yellow metal. Quick hands brushed our faces, and a blur of white-toothed smiles flashed around us. I couldn’t help laughing aloud, batting these flapping creatures away from me. They were like soulscape harpies in plumage of silk, who might carry us off to a final and exquisite devouring. And then...
I noticed a still face in the maelstrom of activity; a white-skinned face, that did not smile. Shadow eyes. A veil about the head. I felt suddenly cold. The whirling corybantic dancers became mere phantoms in the aura of this motionless figure, this other woman. Her body was wrapped in a thick, dark cloak; only her face was visible. As if she’d been waiting for me to notice her, she came towards me, this true harpy-woman; her white face expressionless. I felt that the dancers could not see her; they swirled around her, reeling away as if she was protected by an invisible force from which solid matter simply bounced off. When she was only a couple of feet away from me, she smiled gently. Never, in all my dreams, in all my childhood fantasies, had I seen her this clearly. She was my guardian-pursuer; still wearing the image of the Sacramantan actress, Gimel Metatronim. I studied her beautiful features. No, this was a real person; she was not an image, not a ghost, not a fantasy. She could not actually be Gimel Metatronim, because she was too young. It had been nearly twenty years since I’d been in Sacramante with my mother; Gimel must be in her late forties by now, surely. Could this woman be one of the people I was looking for - a member of the Host? After all, I suspected they had the ability to influence thought. Perhaps she had picked the image of my guardian-pursuer out of my mind. She did not speak, but simply stood there before me, smiling sweetly.
‘Who are you?’ I asked.
She shook her head, lowered it, and when she looked up again, I realised she did not look like my guardian-pursuer at all. I had been mistaken. The figure was male. It had a male face that I did not recognise, but it was exquisitely handsome. Long, dark hair coiled out from beneath the hood of his cloak. His lips, perfectly sculpted, were as pale as his cheeks. His eyes were silvery-grey and shone with their own light. I reached out to touch him, fearing he would vanish at any moment. He caught hold of my hands before I could grab his cloak. He shook his head, and pressed something into my palm, closing my fingers over it. His hands were icy cold. Then he turned and strode into the city. The gaudy dancers spilled into the void he had left behind him, obscuring my sight. I jumped up a little to look over their heads, but could not find the man.
It had all happened in an instant. Had I imagined it? No. There was tangible evidence.
I opened my hand, which had clenched convulsively around whatever had been placed there. I examined the gift, and found it was a perfect, newly minted Sacramantan coin, bearing the noble profile of the Kaliph Izobella. I looked around for Keea, supposing he had witnessed what had happened, but there was no sign of him. He had vanished too.
I was momentarily stunned, and couldn’t decide what to do. An odd feeling was creeping round me; nothing seemed entirely real. At that moment, I did not want to be alone among Strangeling natives. Where had Keea gone? Had he left me for good? I wondered whether one of the dancers had taken him away, and attempted to question them. They giggled at my enquiries, shaking their heads, grabbing hold of my hands and whirling me round in their midst. My voice simply blew away from me.
‘Dance,’ they said, ‘dance with us!’ Their lilting laughter sounded like crazy birds and rippling water; rising and falling.
My head had begun to throb with a dull pain, and my vision seemed somehow faded. Colours blended like wet paint before my eyes. I was dizzy, thrown from person to person in the crowd; hands caught me and pushed me away. I struggled to pass through them.
‘Dance! Dance!’
After what seemed an hour of disorientating scrabbling, I managed to claw my way through the leaping bodies, and stumbled into the city beyond them. The dancers swarmed off down the highway, spinning, leaping, calling out. I shook my head and adjusted my carryback, swaying on my feet for a few moments, to get my bearings. My head felt as if it had been severely kicked; I realised I’d been influenced in some way, perhaps weakened. No more of this!
Summoning a shred of resolve and strength, I walked away from the gateway. The streets beyond were full of milling people, all calling out to each other. There was music everywhere. No one seemed to be doing anything but drinking and dancing. I thought I saw a donkey walking on its hind legs, wearing a crown of roses, but then, blinking, realised it was only a man wearing a donkey mask. A beautiful woman in a yellow dress paused in front of me, and her face aged to withered ruin in seconds. Then, she smiled and was a girl again. She threw a handful of petals over my hat. I would have to find somewhere to rest, because my mind was clearly suffering from delusions. I was sure the man at the city gates had been a member of Host, and that he’d deliberately affected my consciousness. Why? Was I getting too close to the truth? But how had he known who I was? Had Isis Urania sent word ahead, or was Keea responsible? He had vanished. Was I being warned away from my investigations? Questions tumbled through my whirling head. I felt thirsty and sore, sweating heavily beneath my carryback.
A child of indeterminate sex skipped up to me, holding out a metal goblet. ‘Drink, lady, drink,’ it said.
‘What is it?’
‘The vine gift.’
‘How much does it cost?’
The child looked blank. ‘Drink,’ it said, again. ‘It is the vine gift.’
I took the cup, and peered into it. A dark, pungent liquid filled it to the brim, its surface foa
ming as if it had only recently been poured. It smelled like wine. Without consideration of personal health, I found I had raised the cup to my lips and was drinking from it greedily. This must be a dream! I would never do such a rash thing! And yet, some inner part of me was convinced it wasn’t poisoned. Almost immediately, a warm, alcoholic glow began to steal around my body. I entered a floating, relaxed state, and the ache in my head subsided abruptly. Still, I was in no condition to be walking around. I gave the cup back to the child with a murmur of thanks, and said, ’Can you find me a place to rest a while?’
The child nodded gravely and took my hand, tossing the empty goblet onto the floor behind it. I allowed myself to be led further into the city. All around us, the ruins were seething with people, all of whom seemed to celebrating madly. It was as if they’d all been told they only had a day to live, a single day in which to enjoy all the things they had forbidden themselves in life.
The child took me into the garden of a half-fallen villa. The ground was littered with an abundance of rags; musty taffeta, mildewed satin and worn, soft linen. It seemed someone had pitched it all out of one of the upper storeys. Brazen leaves swirled in the air around my head. I knew that, if I didn’t lie down soon, I would fall down. The child indicated a place where the rags were densely heaped, against the villa wall. ‘Lie there,’ it said.
I sank gratefully to my knees and unbuckled my carryback. ‘Will you watch over me and my belongings while I sleep?’ I asked the child. ‘I will give you a coin...’
‘You are perfectly safe,’ said the child, and skipped away.
I lay back among the rank tatters and sighed deeply. This was the true madness of the Strangeling. I realised there was no risk of attack; none at all. Danger here was a radically different concept to any that I was familiar with. It would be very easy to give oneself up to the unreality of this place. I could imagine that should a weak-willed traveller end up in Ykhey, they would quickly become so disorientated, they might forget where they were going and where they had come from. They might just become part of the madness; singing and dancing until they died. The air held a taint of chill; I pulled the damp rags firmly round my body and curled myself around my carryback.
Nobody bothered me. For a while, I slept, my dreams coloured by the hectic voices beyond the garden; the crazy songs of the gift of the vine.
When I awoke, everything was silent. Night had fallen. I clambered to my feet and was relieved to find I felt quite refreshed and clear-headed. However, my stomach was demanding food, and I needed water. It was unfortunate that Keea and I had packed all our provisions into Keea’s carryback that morning. I had two options; search for my erstwhile companion, which seemed pointless given the size of the place, or look for sustenance elsewhere. The latter choice was clearly the only practical one.
As I bent to pick up my carryback, I realised I still had the Bochanegran coin clutched firmly in my fist. For a few moments, I opened my palm and stared at it. What was its significance? Did it suggest I would find answers in Sacramante, or was it a payment to stop me poking my nose in further? Who was the person who had given it to me? Would I see them again? I flung the coin up in the air, caught it, and stowed it in the leather pocket on my belt.
Out on the street, everybody seemed to have disappeared; perhaps they were all unconscious somewhere, hidden away in vaults beneath the city streets. Now why should I think that? I stepped out into clear moonlight; a brilliant radiance that cast impenetrable, sharply-cut shadows across the wide, littered street. Now, this really was a city of the dead. I wondered whether I should find it eerie, although I felt utterly at ease. Which way should I go? There was only one thing to do; enter the spirit of the place. I closed my eyes and spun around for a few moments. When I came to a standstill, I headed in the direction I was facing.
My guardian-pursuer came to me then, as I walked alone in the black and white city of ruins. She was at my side, sensed before I could actually see her. ‘Are you what you seem?’ I asked, strangely calm. ‘Or are you a threat to me?’
‘Ah, Rayo,’ she said, in a lovely voice, but that was all.
‘You are more real to me than you should be,’ I said. ‘Other soulscapers don’t have these experiences.’
‘This might be because you are different from them,’ she replied.
I smiled. ‘You are a product of my mind, my ego. I know I would like to be different, but who doesn’t?’
‘For a person who walks in people’s dreams, who has conversed with gods and ghosts, you are an insufferable sceptic, Rayojini!’ she said, with a laugh. ‘Will you ever accept me for what I am?’
I looked at her. ‘Was it you who attacked me on the road in Khalt?’
‘Attacked you? No! Why should I do such a thing?’ Her response was without artifice, human in its spontaneity.
‘You are real!’ I said. ‘Who are you?’
She smiled. I narrowed my eyes at her.
Gimel? Was it possible...? No, it wasn’t. I was being a fool. This was a member of the Host. It was not my guardian-pursuer, and not Gimel Metatronim. Did she think I was so easily fooled? Still, she did not appear to be threatening or malevolent. Again, I would simply observe.
I did not speak again, and neither did she, but we walked together in easy silence, as friends might, along the road.
Presently, we came to a place that had once been a church or a temple, half gone now, but beautiful in its decay. My companion placed a gentle, icy hand beneath my elbow - it felt indisputably real - and guided me inside the building, through what was hardly more than a crack in the stone. I emerged into a courtyard, once colonnaded, but now surrounded only by rubble. The centre of the court was dominated by a pool in the shape of a trefoil, which was still full of water, its surface thick with overgrown lilies. In the centre of this pool were the remains of a fountain; a great stone shell which, at one time, had probably contained a statue. Now, it contained only a tableau of living sculpture.
I knew him instantly. Dressed in black, he reclined in the shell like a huge cat; his burnished hair a pale glory in the lady-light of the moon. The man was, or at least strongly resembled, my dream phantom, Beth Metatronim. He was holding Keea in his arms. I turned to speak to the woman, ask questions, but she had not followed me through the space in the wall. Impulsively, drawn forward by an uncontrollable tide in my belly, I approached the pool. The image of Beth looked at me, smiled, and then directed his attention to the body he held in his arms. Keea’s head was lolling backwards over his arm, his eyes open and staring. His arms trailed into the choked water. He looked irretrievably dead. Was this another warning? Leave us be or we will kill you as we have him? Was it beyond them to do this? I thought not.
I stood rooted to the spot, as if tendrils of bone had poked down through the soles of my feet and delved deep into the friable stone beneath. Time seemed to accelerate around me, and the moon sailed swiftly across the sky above. Yet I myself was caught in non-time. As I stared, bound in this stasis of eternity, the man in black smiled at me, ran a caressing hand down Keea’s pale chest and then leaned forward to bite him, high on the breast. They are cannibal in the ruins, I thought, quite coherently. A dark, moving line seeped from beneath the man’s lips. He was kneading the flesh with his mouth, sucking, nibbling. I could not look away. I did not want to. At the core of my horror was fascination, and something else, more primal. The man in black sucked my friend Keea as if he was a ripe fruit, and I watched, salivating, as if the juice was filling my mouth, not his.
It was a dream; of course it was. An illusion, a delusion. I had been dazed by the vision of my guardian-pursuer at the city gates, and later drugged by the child. I inhabit my own reality - no one else’s. Each of these excuses was a plaintive, feeble cry in my head.
One moment, I was watching the pool turn red, the next, time had ceased to gallop around me. I was alone, as perhaps I’d always been. There was no churchyard, no pond, no lilies, nothing. I was standing in a wide street, lin
ed by high walls, completely alone.
There was nothing else to do but skulk into a nest of shadows, curl up, wind around myself like a chastened bitch with her nose buried in her tail and, with eyes glinting fearfully into the dark, wait for the morning.
Keea found me lying in the rubble not long after dawn. I stared at him, confused, as he shook me awake, and yet I realised I had not really thought him dead.
‘Rayo, Rayojini! Come back to the land of the living!’ he said, smiling at me. ‘Drunk! How shameful!’
‘Where have you been?’ I demanded, brushing away his hands and sitting up. Miraculously, I was still in possession of my carryback and hat.
‘Exploring,’ he said.
‘Alone?’
He smiled his closed smile. ‘Are you hungry?’
I shook my head, although my stomach was still shrieking to be fed. The question had seemed loaded with obscure meaning, but perhaps I was imagining that.
Keea ignored my response and began to unwrap a package he had with him.