One evening, Zimon took us secretly to a hidden taverna, deep in the city labyrinth, where two performers, of exquisite slimness and beauty, slowly disrobed each other to music, their eyes like polished quartz. Livvy giggled and nudged me, whispering bawdy, slightly uncomfortable, remarks, which I tried to ignore. There was a purity to the performance, a stylish reserve, which provoked only a feeling of sadness within me. Livvy appeared unmoved by such undercurrents and accepted the performance at face value, hissing in delighted embarrassment at the sight of the male’s penis, the female’s rouged breasts. There was nothing more to it than that; it was not erotic in any way, but art, purely that; living sculptures, their planes of vital marble catching the light, dancing with the light, using it to create new forms. I felt drunk when we went out into the evening air, although I had sipped only a citrus cordial.
One morning, Ushas dashed my hopes of yet another day’s frolicking with the Tricantes. ‘Today, I want you with me when I work,’ she said.
I felt a moment’s remorse, because I had almost forgotten why we were there. We had been in the Carmen for three days; I should have offered to assist her before, or at least shown an interest in what she was doing. Liviana was disappointed she would not have my company that day - it was astounding how well we got on - but understood my responsibilities without argument. We could perhaps, she suggested, go out for the evening later.
After breakfast, Ushas led me to a steep, secluded stairway, which had banisters of intricately worked beaten iron that curled around on itself like dried strips of fungus meat. Round windows let in a blaze of morning light, but as we mounted those stairs, I began to feel nervous.
Ushas paused outside a door at the top of the stairs and said, ‘I really want you to see this, Rayo.’
See what? I was unnerved. Would it be horrible to look at?
Inside, the room was very bare; just a bed, a chest of drawers, a chair for the comfort of those who sat with the invalid, and a small table. An unconscious boy lay in the bed, beneath a coverlet of white and gold tapestry. Sunlight fell onto his immobile face, and across the hands of the servant woman who sat reading a book beside him. Later, Ushas told me the Tricantes never left Salyon alone. The servant ducked a curtsy to my mother, put away her book, and left the room.
‘Any change?’ my mother asked her as she passed.
The woman shook her head.
Ushas sighed and walked over to the bed. I followed her. The boy looked dead; his skin was bluish white, the lips colourless, the eye sockets dark as if bruised. He was so thin. His hair looked like a discarded switch of tangled straw on the pillow. Ushas bent down and raised his body a little way off the bed and I saw that much of his hair remained on the pillow as she did so. An evil whiff of sickness filled the air. My stomach knotted; I had never seen anyone as ill as this.
Ushas examined his body and then lowered him back down. ‘Is it the Fear?’ I asked.
She turned and looked at me - oh, how I remember her face in that moment - and just shrugged. She cannot help him, I thought, she cannot heal him. I felt faint.
‘Physically, I can find nothing amiss,’ she said. ‘And in the soulscape ...’ She rubbed her face with long fingers, and then tucked her braids back behind her ears. ‘If it is the Fear, then I came too late, and yet the Tricantes swear his condition wasn’t that serious until just before we arrived. Otherwise, they would have dragged in a soulscaper off the street, I’m sure! I can’t understand it. His father says the boy was simply listless, and prone to night terrors. Local healers suggested it was a growing sickness - it can happen - and that a good soulscaper could straighten out his mind to face adulthood. But this, this is not a growing sickness.’
‘What did you find in the soulscape?’ I asked, curiosity overwhelming squeamishness.
Ushas actually shuddered at the memory. ‘Every day I go in there,’ she said softly. ‘Every day. It is a dead landscape. Utterly dead. I’m at a loss for what to do.’
‘Have you told the parents?’
She shook her head. ‘I can’t give up yet.’
‘Do you want me to accompany you today?’
She smiled wearily and shook her head. ‘No, Rayo. I don’t want you in there with me; you don’t have the experience for this yet. I just wanted you to see, that’s all. It is not very often that we come across a case like this, but it’s likely you will encounter one yourself, in the future, and I think it’s important for you to be able to recognise the external appearance. Now, I will burn the resin, and I want you to wait outside until I’m in trance. Then, come back in, and take away the resin bowl. Observe. Will you do that?’
I nodded, and turned to the door. Pausing with my hand on the latch, I said, ‘Is it possible to cure cases like these?’
Ushas was busying herself with the resin bowl and her tinder. She did not look round. ‘There is always a first time,’ she said.
The tutors never tell us of this condition. It is almost as if they want to deny it exists. Older soulscapers take it upon themselves to educate their juniors about it. I waited outside Salyon’s door, until I was sure my mother was heavily in trance. Then, I quietly re-entered the room, holding my breath, so as not to risk becoming tranced myself, and put the resin-bowl out on the window ledge, dousing it with a little water I found in a flagon on a table by the bed. I left the window open and breathed the fresh air, until the pungent scaping-smoke had thinned. Ushas was sitting on the floor, straight-backed, breathing evenly. The boy was motionless as before. I leaned against the windowsill and watched. Occasionally, Ushas would curl her lips into a snarl, and twitch, but there was no other sign of distress. After an hour, she sighed deeply, and her head sank onto her breast. Then she looked up and blinked at me, with a faint smile. Her face had an unnaturally purplish tinge in the dark hollows of her cheeks.
‘I am not without hope,’ she said. I went over and helped her to her feet.
‘What did you find?’ I asked, bringing her a cup of water.
She drank it before answering. ‘A small and frightened shred of consciousness,’ she said.
We hugged each other. Perhaps, tomorrow, she could coax that shred out of hiding.
Ushas did not ask for my company again, and the next day Liviana informed me I was to be given a treat. ‘What treat is this?’ I asked.
She tapped her nose. ‘Aha! Wait and see. Let me lend you some clothes; you must look your best!’
I went along to her dressing room, where we spent considerable time primping and preening, accompanied by much hysterical laughter. Liviana had not asked me how her brother was, which I thought was a little strange. She was such a warm person; I could not understand why she wasn’t more concerned about poor Salyon. When I began to tell her that Ushas was hopeful about his condition, she changed the subject. It was very odd.
Once we were ready to go out, Agnestia arrived. Her sophisticated calm was tempered by a flush of excitement in her cheeks. Livvy had dressed me in a simple, yet beautiful gown of dark ruby velvet that left my shoulders bare and hugged my figure like a glove, prompting Agnestia to exclaim, ‘Oh, how that suits you, Rayo dear! You look like a Deltan princess!’ She leaned towards me confidentially. ‘Now, my dear, we are going on a little adventure. You must promise you won’t breathe a word about it to anyone - especially our parents!’
‘Promise!’ Livvy said, clutching my arm.
I shrugged, slightly unnerved by the feverish joy in the other girls’ eyes. ‘Very well,’ I said.
Agnestia stood back. ‘Good! Outsiders aren’t generally allowed where we’re going, but because you’re just a girl, and some people are curious about soulscapers, I’ve been requested to present you.’
‘Present me where?’ I asked her. ‘Where are we going exactly?’ I wondered, with a flicker of delighted dread, whether it was the court of the Kaliph, or somewhere equally grand.
Agnestia smiled broadly. ‘To the atelier courts,’ she replied.
I had already gathered
that the creative people of Sacramante were held in an almost holy high regard. Artists and musicians were courted like royalty. Still, I could understand why they were so celebrated; talent oozed from the very walls of the city. We drove to the atelier courts in one of the family carriages. All the artisans lived in this area; it was a city within a city. Tall black gates admitted us to the hushed, reverent atmosphere, where soaring buildings blotted out the sky. The streets, in comparison to Sacramante proper, were weirdly quiet and devoid of people. Agnestia explained that the artisans needed tranquillity in which to work, and that the outside world was excluded very deliberately. Around us, high, balconied houses, many with glass roofs, surrounded open courts, which were occasionally ceilinged by thick, ancient rose-vines growing over trellises. There were many still pools crusted with lilies, but no fountains. Livvy told me how the richest Sacramantan families patronised the artisans of the city, be they musicians, actors, poets or sculptors, and that the Tricantes had an interest in many of these people.
The carriage came to a halt outside a huge house of matt black stone, whose front doors were at least four times the height of a man. Giant trees rustled all around us, but there was hardly any other sound. The door was opened to us by a uniformed serving-woman, whose apron was of the most exquisite lace I had ever seen. We were ushered inside the building. Here, I was silenced by the holy air of the atelier; its entrance hall possessed all the sombreness of the most ancient and brooding of cathedrals. Our shoes tapped obscenely loud upon the glossy, wooden floor. I asked whose house this was, and Livvy whispered back that the building comprised many fine apartments, and that over fifty artisans lived there. Agnestia told me we were going to visit the apartment of a famous singer named Hadith Sarim - a fabulously exotic name that had an arcane feel upon the tongue.
The serving-woman took us up two flights of stairs. Handsome statues of semi-naked elemental spirits reposed in niches and the walls were covered in tapestries and paintings. Light fell down the stairwell from far above, slightly green in colour, because vines were growing over the skylights. I was amazed at the silence. Surely, there should be sounds of instruments being played, voices practising their scales or learning theatrical parts. Obviously, I knew very little about the creative process. The serving-woman, our guide, paused before a pair of double doors on the third floor landing and pulled on a bell-rope. I heard it ringing sonorously inside. The doors were opened, a small way, by another woman wearing domestic uniform. She conferred in whispers with our guide, and then asked us into the apartment.
The opulence within was understated, and thus more impressive. We entered a beautiful salon, whose polished wooden floor was covered only by a modest circular rug, of black and red silk, near the hearth. The white walls were hung with tapestries, worked in the style favoured by Deltan carpet-makers; simple designs in palest ochre, blue and gold. Huge round windows, set with stained glass that matched the hangings and rug, let in a kaleidoscope of muted light. Hadith herself came into the room as we entered, through a door opposite. I had never seen such a striking and unusual-looking woman. Her skin was utterly white, proclaiming that something other than Bochanegran blood ran in her veins. She was framed from neck to waist in long, white hair, which suggested age, yet her face was young, and she wore a bright red robe that almost made the eyes ache; a redness echoed in her thin, pencilled lips and in the painted dots at the corner of each slanted eye. Her eyes, when I first looked, appeared dark yellow. While Agnestia made introductions, I hovered uncertainly in the background. In my own country, my mother was a celebrity, but here, we were nobodies. I did not feel comfortable with that. Then, as the serving woman was taking our cloaks, the Sarim fixed me with a cat’s stare and said, ‘Ah, you must be the young soulscaper! How privileged I am to offer you my hospitality!’ At which I felt considerably more important, and relaxed enough to change my body posture to one of communication and interest. Hadith came and touched my elbow lightly, directing me to a seat. ‘When Agnestia told me the Tricantes had soulscapers to stay, I just had to indulge my curiosity and have her bring you here! What an intriguing life you must lead!’
‘Well... not really.’ I was dazzled by her presence. ‘I haven’t finished my training yet.’
‘You have such beautiful eyes!’
I felt my face grow hot. There was something uncomfortably intimate in Hadith’s manner, an intimacy I was unfamiliar with.
We sat down on plump, rug-strewn couches, and the serving-woman brought us watered wine and biscuits. Hadith Sarim did not eat or drink anything. Everyone was speaking of the opening of a new play the following evening. It was a certainty that everyone who was anyone would be there. Naturally, the Tricantes had booked a balcony at the coliseum, and both my mother and I would be able to attend. Hadith Sarim had a cameo piece in the production. She was to play a breeze and would sing accordingly as she blew across a representation of an empty street, where the prima donna actress would be lamenting the loss of her soul. ‘The production should be of interest to you,’ the Sarim told me. ‘In a way, it concerns your profession.’
I was flattered by Hadith’s attention. She confessed to a fascination with soulscaping and asked me to tell her of it. All I could do was relate some of the experiences I had had during my training; the training methods themselves, of course, were secret.
‘It must be very similar to making love with a close, close friend,’ Hadith declared, interrupting one of my stories. ‘To be one, in that way: it is more than sex, of course. I have an empathy with that.’
I could not comment. Virgin still, my face flamed. She noticed, of course she did, and smiled. Mercifully, she did not speak.
Section Six
Rayojini
‘At once delight and horror on us seize…’
From ‘On Paradise Lost’, Milton
Even Ushas seemed excited by the prospect of a visit to the theatre. She had told me, when I returned from the Sarim atelier, that her work with Salyon was progressing; very slowly, but it was still progress. She said she would welcome an evening’s entertainment, away from the concerns of an addled soulscape. I did not tell her about my visit to the house of Sarim, not because I feared she might inform the Tricante parents, but for some other, deeper reason. Once I had departed Hadith’s presence, my awe of her had lessened but it left a potent residue behind. The thought of that pale, enchanting woman, with her hint of hidden menace, made me feel absurdly excited. I did not want to see her again, exactly, but I wanted to think about her all the time.
There was a great deal of feminine fussing during those blissful hours before we all trouped out to the coliseum. Breathless with anticipation, I let Livvy drape me in her clothes, giddy from the dabs of sharp scent behind my ears. In comparison to the loose, swaggery clothes of Taparak, Sacramantan attire had felt very uncomfortable to me, and the evening wear was even worse, but once harnessed into silk and sashes, I felt so adult and willowy, discomfort was a minor concern. Livvy had pinned my hair into a stiff black net, studded with jet; my eye-sockets had been subtly shaded with shiny, dark green powder, my lips with scarlet clay-sugar.
‘Everyone will be there! Everyone!’ Liviana cried, dancing around her room, spreading out a lacy black fan and peeking over its taut vanes.
The two cousins, Perdina and Voile, emerged from their sanctuary, dressed in white, their black hair loose like curtains around their pale, narrow faces. The men, comparatively dull beings in this house of female finery, were dashing nonetheless in tight clothes of viridian and iron blue, gold earrings glinting among the oiled ringlets around their shoulders. We all bundled into the Tricante carriages; torches spitting white sparks at rear and start, polished horses caparisoned in satiny leather shifting restlessly in their harness. And then, crammed into the carriage, ear-high in crushed satin, lace and silk-net, we were off, trotting swiftly out of the Tricante court into the aromatic, torch-lit night. My heart was beating so fast, I could actually hear it echoing in my ears, and my face
felt on fire with excitement. Agnestia produced a silver flask of vicious brandy, which she passed around the carriage, making her mother scold and laugh.
‘Not for the children, please, Aggie!’
Liviana took the flask and swigged, making a great show of coughing and groaning. I sipped more sparingly, and the fire of it gripped my throat and belly, merely fuelling the heady euphoria I felt. This was life. This: not the lazy, ritual-strung routines of Taparak. There was no occasion at home when I could ever feel like this. Tappish celebrations were laid-back affairs in comparison, loose and carefree, devoid of tension, but it was the tension that made the heart sing, that kindled the feverish need to experience, and taste and taste, until the tongue was numb. Take me, Sacramante, I thought, eyes closed. I am yours.