‘Your unconventional opinions are indeed interesting,’ the Oriukh said, ‘but impractical. You are young, Tartaruchi, and full of zeal. I appreciate your intentions are voiced in the interests of eloim, as do all of us here, I’m sure, but I cannot empathise with your suggestions. Please, take your seat. Thank you for your contribution.’
Thus, the Tartaruchi prince was silenced.
Because of historical events, when the majority of humanity turned on eloimkind, we need the patronage of sympathetic humans in order to exist; we depend upon their cooperation. However, these same historical events necessitate that only a very few, trusted humans, who have pledged to support us, can be aware of our true nature. Creatures that feed upon blood are abhorred and feared by the majority of humans. There are many myths concerning our previous, more visible existence in the world, but these are now only stories with which to frighten children. But for the most ignorant and superstitious of individuals - who will believe all manner of improbable nonsense - humanity no longer believes that blood-stealers really exist. We do not have the power of soulscapers, but through persistent and concerted effort, we have managed to affect human consciousness to the degree where non-patrons do not question our sequestered lifestyle and our feeding requirements are concealed. However, without the protection of the patrons, and their willingness to provide our nourishment, we would undoubtedly have been discovered by the populace, driven out and killed. Apart from the patrons, we have to maintain a strict distance between ourselves and humanity. Obviously, isolation alone is not sufficient precaution and, over the centuries, we have developed further camouflaging techniques, but there can be no doubt of the debt we owe to the patrons. To express ingratitude was to risk taunting fate; we were all afraid of that, aware of the delicacy of our disguise.
Avirzah’e Tartaruchi very much wished to leave the hall after the Oriukh silenced him; I could feel it strongly. Used as he was to commanding attention, it did not rest well with him to be contradicted. No doubt, he’d been sure the throngs would have greeted his ideas warmly. It was unfortunate for him that he had not prepared his speech more carefully, to avoid emotive terms. I even felt a moment of pity for him, dashed prince. Still, he was foolish to have dragged the reeking past into our midst in that way; it was something all had expelled from their minds. There was so much unsaid about our history; so much pain contained there. Even as I smugly enjoyed the Oriukh’s putdown of Avirzah’e, I did find myself wondering whether there was not more than a grain of good sense in his words. His solutions were outlandish, of course, but perhaps the secret to the root of the sickness did lie in the time he spoke of. I saw his sister offer him a comforting hand, which he shrugged off like a petulant man-child. Beth caught my eye and smiled; he had seen it too.
The Oriukh had dismissed Avirzah’e entirely from his attention. ‘How long till your flower blooms?’ he asked us.
‘Impossible to specify,’ Beth replied, ‘but we shall be vigilant.’
Then, a new voice interrupted. Finally, Metatron had risen from his seat. ‘I find myself praying, my son, that you will not be among the casualties that will doubtlessly occur before this soulscaper is ready for whatever you have in mind.’ His words were almost like a threat. I felt Beth flinch against me, and longed to reach for his hand, but I wanted to betray no sign of weakness. ‘I would like a question answered,’ Metatron continued, facing the Oriukh. ‘If we concede to my children’s plan, how do we cope with the sickness in the meantime?’
The Oriukh nodded. ‘A good point, Metatron. All I can suggest is this: we must stretch our time to accommodate the period of waiting. We must observe each other closely, give succour if we can, and trust the sickness cannot accelerate. If anyone manifests the urge to self-destruction, perhaps they should be persuaded to take retreat-slumber until a cure is found. I also recommend that all those of your families currently in retreat-slumber should remain so; again, until the problem is resolved. I feel we should use this time to investigate the condition further; perhaps other solutions will be revealed. When Beth and Gimel’s soulscaper is ready to be brought to Sacramante, we will discuss their plan again. Is everyone in accord?’
As the Oriukh was psychically in tune with all eloim, the question was merely a courtesy. The lords of each family rose and gave assent. We descended from the podium; Avirzah’e was the only black maggot amid the nectar of empathy. He had done more to sway eloim opinion in our favour than we could ever have hoped possible.
The throngs had begun to move out of the hall to take refreshment. The Kaliph’s offerings would be conducted to the ceremony rooms nearby. Beth and I linked arms and walked towards the door. ‘Should we attempt reparation with the Tartaruchis?’ I asked Beth. It would be humiliating, but perhaps necessary for eloim well being.
My brother shook his head. ‘Never. Let him steam to a husk.’ He put his arm around my waist. ‘Lilit’s Lip, am I glad that’s over! I need refreshment now, most urgently. May we pair for the sup?’
I inclined my head. ‘My pleasure.’
The Kaliph’s offerings had been escorted to a large function room, where they milled nervously in its centre, their faces coloured along the bones, illustrating their contained frenzy. In deference, we would make their sacrifice an ecstasy. Many eloim had elected to depart at this point, perhaps having recently nourished themselves, or else hastening to sweeter suppings elsewhere, in more secluded surroundings. Beth and I considered it would be impolite not to partake of the feast. We were honoured guests, after all.
Beth asked me to choose a soul to sup, and I picked a radiant bloom, one whose eyes had followed us across the room, one who wanted us to have him. He was a lovely boy, his flesh petals yellow-brown as lion fur, with pony eyes and the hair of a precious mare. He was exquisite; almost too good to husk, and yet, someone, somewhere, had surrendered him, this lovely son, for our refreshment. I could have wept at the gesture.
He seemed dazed, unaware of his surroundings, and I had to take hold of his arm to lead him into one of the many curtained alcoves that lined the room. Within it, a bed of cushions and recently cut petals were provided for comfort. Beth drew the night-dark curtain around us, and we were alone with our willing sacrifice, bright stars in an infinity of blackness. We stripped the flower of its foliage and purred and rubbed our faces across its flesh. The excitement of knowing we would utterly drain this boy kindled frantic desire. He too was aroused by the prospect of his sacrifice; the intimacy of this knowledge we shared was more holy than any physical sensations we might soon enjoy. I could not even wait to disrobe myself, but hitched up my skirts and settled on his body, gripping him within, giving myself up to the tide of sensations that began to roll and crest and crash inside me. He bucked me like the precious mare; he bit his lips and made the blood flow. Beth kissed it all away, sucking the juice from the torn flesh, and proffering me a heady mouthful of it in a kiss. The taste made me explode within. I swallowed greedily and bent to take more from the wound itself. My physical desires utterly sated, I rolled to the side, intent on refreshing myself more thoroughly. Beth took my place in one fluid motion. I nipped the boy’s throat-flesh, my stomach contracting in need. Such sweet sacrifice. I told him I loved him, covered him with kisses, from brow to breast. I felt his hand in my hair. The fingers convulsed. He reached the moment of release, and in that moment, spoke.
He pulled up my head by the hair, brought my face close to his own. His voice was pained, husky. ‘Do not kill me,’ he said. His breath smelled of blood.
‘It speaks! An omen!’ Beth cried.
Normally, they make no sound at all, having been trained that way, or drugged.
‘What did you say?’ I asked. We had all become still, the only motion that of trickling sweat and blood. The boy’s fingers were still entangled in my hair, quite painfully, in fact. I tried to pull away.
‘Don’t kill me,’ he said again.
Beth and I looked at each other. My brother’s face was a mask of blood, his
naked chest striped with red. In that moment, reality came crashing in, and the holiness fled. It seemed obscene, what we were doing. Where was the propriety of the sup in this?
‘Don’t; don’t kill him,’ said Beth.
Later, we crept out beneath the curtains. We wrapped the boy in Beth’s cloak, having licked his wounds clean, and took him home. The way he had reached out to us, denied his holy fate, was a significant part of all that happened later. The name his people had given him was forgotten. We called him Amelakiveh, and he was useful to us, sometimes.
Section Five
Rayojini
‘…if there be cure or charm to respite or deceive, or slack the pain of this ill mansion…’
Paradise Lost, Book II
When I was sixteen, Ushas was summoned to the city of Sacramante. Lansaal had little truck with the Bochanegran Empire. The boundary was a shivery place where realities crossed, and strained to overtake each other. Taparak, situated so close to Lansaal, was more or less considered a state of that realm. Once a year, the Shah of Lansaal and his family visited our city, to take a holiday among the high dreys, and spend time with the most celebrated members of our community. Popular legend suggested the royal family would sometimes don common clothing, and walk in disguise among the people. This was undoubtedly untrue; I am sure the Shah never ventured from his holiday palace near the sky when he was in Taparak. However, other than this royal favour, Taparak itself had very little to do with the government of Lansaal; the Taps were independent creatures, roaming far. Racially, the Taps and the Lans were far apart. Tapar Mountain had been colonised, centuries ago, by the black-skinned people of the Delta Lands, who were our ancestors. The Lans were tawny- skinned, and not as tall as us. We considered their culture to be rather primitive in comparison to our own, and discouraged its eccentric religious influences invading the mountain. Our city, however, was a favourite resort with foreign travellers and there was a thriving tourist trade. As many travellers had to cross Lansaal to reach us, pausing at Lannish coastal towns along the way, and using Lannish transport to traverse the water, the Taps enjoyed an easy relationship with the Lans. We brought them revenue; they brought us clients in their slim, turquoise-prowed boats.
It was in one of these boats that my mother and I crossed the sea to Lansaal.
I had only been down through the mountain twice before in my life - does this sound strange? Well, there was no reason for me to do so. I had scampered through the phosphorous-lit terraces of the fungus farms and dipped my toes in the icy underground lakes, which shivered with the memory of starlight, but I had never ventured further down the mountain than the third tier, where I would sometimes wave my mother off on her travels. Now, the thought of travelling made me feel uneasy; I was afraid of the world outside. Still, there was no use getting flustered about it; my future lay upon the open road. I was to be a soulscaper and soulscapers were away from home for most of the time.
There was one part of the descent which I particularly hated; when, at the third level platform, we had to enter the air-raft on its creaking, swaying ropes and be lowered down the wide shaft, known as the Throat, to the ninth level. There were many smaller shafts leading downwards, twisting this way and that, but the Throat was the largest and straightest, being, as its name implies, a yawning maw right down the centre of the mountain, passing through half a dozen levels. I was already twitchy by the time Ushas had bundled me into the basket of the raft, while it was still tethered to the passenger platform. It was like stepping out into infinite space, supported only by a dust-mote, and I was horribly conscious of the enormous gulf beneath us. Ushas mocked my nervousness, bantered lightly with the raft conductor, and settled herself for the ride. Then, the anchors were hauled in, and the raft swung out, with sickening swiftness, into the centre of the shaft. I huddled by my mother’s feet and clamped my hands over my mouth, in order to prevent cries of terror coming out and embarrassing us. It was pitch-dark in the shaft, but for the dim orange glow of the conductor’s lamp. The conductor was, in fact, the only pleasurable aspect of the journey; a handsome man. Negligent of any danger, he leaned over the safety rail - too flimsy by far - and stared up at the diminishing light above or else down into the threatening dark. Eerie calls floated by us from the pulley-men at top and bottom. ‘Ai-yeee-aaah! Ai-yeee-aah!’ and the chittering reply like the call of a desert jackal, ‘Yip, yip-yip, yiii-ip!’ Once, after a visit to the passenger platform to see my mother off on a journey, I had imagined these adepts of the shafts might be weighing the souls of their passengers; if found wanting, the pulley ropes would snap - clack! - and the unworthy would zoom into the darkness below, their requiem the jackal-calls of the pulley-men. By the age of sixteen, I was proud enough to deny such fantasies, and merely flared my nostrils at the conductor.
Ushas had received a commission from one of the merchant families in Sacramante; a minor problem, they avowed, and hardly urgent, but one that they felt merited arrest at the hands of the most celebrated of soulscapers. Ushas was not the most celebrated of soulscapers, but she was one of the most glamorous, and also the only glamorous soulscaper currently available for commission. Her guild had apportioned her the job.
‘I feel it’s about time you got off the mountain,’ Ushas had said to me, just after we’d finished the celebratory meal following her official commission. For a few moments, I had been intensely irritated, having been looking forward to being left to my own devices at home. Ushas did not fuss or place strictures on my behaviour, but I had already learned the singularly precious joy of having the hollow to myself. Sometimes, she had to present herself for further training at the guild dreys, when she would return exhausted after a week or so, and sleep for several days. Other times, she’d get itchy feet, and make small forays into Lansaal on shopping expeditions for luxuries we could not buy in Taparak. While I was still a young child, the guild did not send her away on long ‘scaping jobs, but as I grew older, she had started disappearing for weeks at a time. Both of us, I think, were grateful for the space that gave us. By this time, we had risen in the Taparak stratum, and occupied a drey only three levels below that of the scryers. When we’d first moved home, I had missed the ground bustle, but had since fallen in love with the feeling of open air around us, the play of winds among the thinner branches, the illusion that one could be all alone.
I had applied myself earnestly to my studies - being an earnest young woman all round - and would soon be considered capable enough to ply the Tappish trade abroad in the land. Training had had its ups and downs; sometimes I had sunk into despair, thinking I’d never develop the necessary skills. But now, I was beginning to feel more confident and could slip with ease into the scaping trance.
The first time I had experimented with the fumes had been terrifying. No matter how much my tutor reassured me she would remain with me as a guide, I still feared losing myself in the soulscape. The basis of the scaping-mixes is a strange substance, a resin derived from a hardy mountain plant, which can be harvested in two ways. The first is to produce a blend simply for scrying, which is the superficial examination of the soulscape - rather than truly entering it - or inspecting the contents other people’s minds. For this mix, the plants are milked through a small cut and the resulting milk-ooze is allowed to harden and dry. The second method is the one by which we produce a strong scaping-fume that truly alters conscious awareness and allows ingress to the soulscape. Scry bugs feed upon the plant, absorbing huge amounts for their body weight of the active substance in the sap. If the bugs themselves are harvested, crushed and dried, incorporated into a fume mix with raw plant resin, a far more potent fume is produced. Quite how it works upon the human frame, we do not know. The effect is this: two or more people breathing in enough of the fume can enter each other’s mindscape, and from there, should they be familiar with the path, the soulscape. Gradually, as the fume is ingested into the lungs, outer reality fades. At first, there is a confusion of colours and sensations - impossible to de
scribe - but if regular breathing and tranquillity of thought are maintained, the inner landscapes of each individual are allowed to touch, and the consciousness of everyone present may wander at will in the new territory. Naturally, the technique has its dangers, which is why we soulscapers undergo such protracted training. An inexperienced, or untrained, person should never attempt to use the scry-bug fume. Without proper control, the individual can become lost in an alien scape, where they remain as an unwanted and disruptive presence, eventually driving the host insane. More than a few soulscaping cases have involved unravelling such amateurish attempts at scape-sharing. Lamentably, unscrupulous individuals in Taparak are willing to purloin and sell the fume-mix off-mountain for a high profit. Many thrill-seekers indulge in illicit scape-sharing, and most of that number end up in trouble. Fortunately, perhaps, it is rare that anybody rescued from such a traumatic condition attempts to repeat the experiment. In fact, there are individuals who, once led back to reality, have made it their life’s-work to travel around warning others about the practice. They are usually rather demented in their approach, however, and generally end up joining the priesthood of some religion or another.
As trainees, I and my peers were taught not only how to enter the soulscape and wander in it at will, but also to manipulate the information and symbolism we might find there. Initially, all trainees were closely monitored, and our tutor, Tiji, would always accompany us. Later, we were allowed to burn the resin in pairs, but it was a long time until we were ever let near someone whose soulscape was less than healthy. The first experience of the inner realm is impossible to describe, but the feelings it invokes are those of terror, wonder and sheer disbelief. There are landscapes there, but they are like nothing seen on Earth; gone are the restrictions of natural order; these are the kingdoms of the imagination, where nothing is impossible or too bizarre to exist. Naturally, not everyone is sturdy enough to withstand the soulscape, and several of my classmates had to drop out of the training. This was not regarded as a failure, because the Taps believe everyone has a skill for something. Those who could not work within the soulscape were encouraged to find a vocation in another craft. Secretly, though, those of us who had the strength to carry on were very proud of ourselves. Only a week before Ushas and I left the mountain, I had completed my first scaping task.