He picked his way to the river’s edge, stepping over mooring ropes and landing planks, crossing the river from decorative barge to decorative barge. He was aware of the idols and statues that grinned and grimaced from their deck-side shrines. He stopped cheekily to pick at a golden plate filled with fruit and pale meat, then tasted a scented wine from a clay jar, while pausing briefly to watch the strange, swaying dance between a naked couple. Their full-fleshed bodies gleamed almost incandescently with oil as they circled each other, mirror images in motion, if not in form, their eyes locked, their lips coming closer to the final, initiating kiss which, erotic though it was, heralded a sudden, all-embracing intimacy that Jack blushed to witness.
As he stepped onto the far bank, the light dimmed again, and the sound of the party faded to a distant echo.
Ahead of him, temples loomed in the half-light and a massive, shadowy form moved among them, glimpsed in the alleys as it prowled restlessly, watching. It was taller than the buildings and Jack glimpsed heavy legs, quizzical eyes, a bulky shape, man-like, keeping its distance in the sanctuary gloom. A moment later a second giant walked behind it and the two behemoths slipped away into the shadows.
‘Titans. They won’t hurt you.’
He turned at the sound of the voice. Natalie – the shade of his daughter – stood behind him, smiling nervously as she stared up at him.
‘Did you see the horses?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
She looked round quickly, ruefully. ‘I’d like to ride one. But I can never get near them …’
‘Natalie? Are you … is your name Natalie?’
‘I dream with her sometimes. By the big trees.’
There was movement distantly and a wolf or large dog bayed. Shade glanced around, her face a picture of childish apprehension. ‘This way,’ she gestured, but suddenly changed her direction as the flag-stoned street itself started to shift and rise, becoming an arching back, the shoulders swelling as giant arms pushed the creature up from its subterranean waiting place.
‘Another Titan?’ Jack shouted as he fled behind her.
‘K’Thone!’ she seemed to call. ‘Always breaking up the city. Come on.’
Shadows, always shadows.
The white-robed girl ran barefoot through the labyrinth and Jack followed, one moment stifling in the heavy air, the next welcoming a gusting, freezing wind that poured between colonnades and arches.
Where are you taking me?
He could suddenly smell water. Shade was scampering towards a low arch beyond which steps led down to a wide pool. This was fed by a natural well that rose somewhere in the carved rock surround, to pour slowly through a series of brickwork pipes. As Jack crouched by the fresh pool he was aware of movement above him, cutting off the light from the windows that opened into this water sanctuary. Shade was washing her hands, splashing her face, wetting her feet, rubbing vigorously at the soles and heels and muttering to herself.
‘Sore. The streets are hard and I get lots of cuts. Do you want to drink? It’s fresh. I often come here to drink.’
Jack took her advice, aware that the rock around the spouts on the other side of the pool was carved into female faces. They stared at him through wide or slanted eyes, and seemed to be kissing him with parted, half-smiling lips. There were five mask-spouts in all.
‘Whose place is this?’
‘The women’s place,’ the girl said with a nervous giggle. ‘But it’s OK, they’re not here at the moment.’
‘How do you know?’
‘The water swirls when they’re here. Like a whirlpool. And it smells like blood. And you can see silver light everywhere. Strips of skin from the Moon. They’re hunting with their dogs, deeper in the city. Hurry up, though. If the hunt’s been good they’ll be back with their kill before you hear their horns calling.’
There was an odd quality to her words, something in part exciting, since it was frightening, and in part familiar. Natalie herself didn’t talk quite like this; the language seemed too advanced for a five year old, or at least, for the five year old he knew and loved.
He had to remind himself that this was just an echo of his daughter, a part of Greyface that was simply playing with him, drawing him willingly deeper into a web, deeper into the heart of the ghostly city.
Shade had finished her freshening and led the way out of the pool, racing up the steps, leaving wet footmarks on the cold stone.
‘Come on. Come on,’ she barked childishly. ‘Quickly.’
Outside, she ran towards two massive stone statues representing fabulous beasts, mythic perhaps, but beyond his experience: bird-headed and bird-winged, their cold eyes gazed into the city from squat reptilian bodies, long tails curled, scaled bellies scraping the ground as the wide, lizard legs seemed poised for sudden movement. They guarded the passage into a drab, monolithic building, a face of dressed stone without decoration, open double doors that were narrow but high, an impression of total darkness within.
Jack called her back. She seemed impatient, doing an odd little hopping dance, anxious to draw him deeper. ‘You must come.’
‘I’m tired. I need to rest. I’m frightened, Shade. I need to go home. There’s something wrong; I came in good faith, I came with promises, to seek guarantees …’
‘Stop it. Stop it,’ she snapped. ‘Silly words. Silly words.’
‘I came to see Baalgor. But he’s just playing games with me. I made a mistake coming here. Now I want you to come back with me. Come home with me …’
He reached out a hand to the suddenly furious child.
‘Come on, Shade. You don’t belong here. You’re part of a different world. You belong with someone else. Come home with me.’
And do what? Stitch you back into Nattie?
‘I belong here!’ she screamed, but she was backing away, her face breaking into a tearful mask of fear and uncertainty.
He went towards her not knowing what he could achieve, and took her by the shoulder, fighting her as she struggled, subduing the flailing of her hands with his stronger grip.
‘I’m taking you back, Shade. You’ll have to show me the way.’
She snarled at him, shockingly feral. ‘And if I do? You fool! He’ll just come again. Skin by skin, he’ll take me. The inside skins, not the outside skin. Pretty, pretty child, that’s all you’ll have, never loving, never living. But she’ll be here. All of her, all the inside Nattie. All of me. I love this place, Daddy. If you take me away, I’ll just come back. I’m protected by a stronger man than you.’
He drew her small body towards him, furious with these weasel words, these ‘not-her’ words, this ghostly programme that Greyface had instilled within this echo of his daughter.
‘There is no-one stronger than me when it comes to you, Natalie. Natalie!’
As he emphasized her name he discovered that, strong though he was, her teeth were stronger, and as they chewed through his flesh he screeched with pain. She slipped away, running to the bird-headed monsters, whose stone wings rose quickly as she approached, their beaked faces turning, lowering, to form a guard against the deeper temple.
Hesitating as these monsters threatened him, he could only watch helplessly as Shade squirmed between the marble jaws, slapping one of the creatures which opened and closed its mouth with a crack of stone.
The splayed legs shuffled, the guardians approached him for a moment, moving rapidly, then settled. From behind them, the tall figure of Baalgor – Baalka – approached, his face mottled where the pale clay mask had broken and fallen away from burnished skin. His eyes were like jewels.
The girl now clambered on to his cloaked shoulders, giggling helplessly as she struggled to find a purchase on the man’s back. Greyface both helped and hindered her, a typical fatherly tease, tugging here, pushing there, half-smiling as the girl struggled to sit on his shoulders, finally allowing her into position, her legs dangling down in front of him, her grip safely in his long hair.
He came within striking di
stance of Jack, who began to smell the scalps and the bloody clumps of feathers on the long, foul cloak. The clay that caked the body below was finely cracked, crazy patterns, and daubed and striped with colour, as if Greyface had wiped the juices of meats and berries on his belly.
‘Who are you?’ Jack whispered.
Man and girl watched him, the same gleam of confidence and arrogance in their eyes. Baalgor ignored the question.
‘I’ve seen you play with Natalie like this. It’s tiresome, tiring. But all shades come with echoes of their past, and these things have to be accommodated.’
‘You’ve stolen other souls, then.’
Greyface shook his head, glanced down as the girl squirmed, slapped at her leg. ‘Easy, now!’ And Jack felt a surge of heat to his face.
Don’t you hit my daughter …!
But he kept quiet. The bull-runner watched him.
‘Are you calling to her?’ he asked after a moment.
‘Who?’
‘Who do you think? You’ve named her Greenface. Natalie tells me you’ve found her name is Ahk’Nemet. That means she’s spoken to you. Are you trying to persuade her? I need her with me, Jack. I intend to have her … your daughter’s life is my price. I’ve made that clear enough, I think.’
‘I’ve come to ask you to let her go. Give me back the …’ he remembered Shade’s words. ‘Give me back the inside skins you’ve stolen. Give me back my daughter – all of her: I’ll seek Green – Ahk’Nemet for you. I came very close–’
‘I know.’
‘I can get close again. I’m prepared to help, but I can’t make promises. The journey to find her is very damaging, very wounding. And she didn’t want to come when I encountered her.’
Greyface seemed irritated. ‘I know.’
‘Well if you know, then you must know how difficult it is.’
‘She doesn’t want to come! If she’d wanted to come with me, she’d have done so. Of course it’s difficult.’
‘But I’m trying, dammit! Look at these cuts. That’s wild rose and harpoon, and a blowpipe dart that still hurts! Your companion is a vicious hunter.’
‘I know. You’ll have your work cut out.’ He laughed. ‘Why are you here, talking to me? You should be pursuing her. Shouldn’t he, my sweetheart?’
This last was addressed to the smiling girl, who leaned down across Greyface’s head and let the man nibble her fingers. All the while he did this, Natalie watched her father. Greyface’s touch was on the girl’s legs, his fingers on her thighs, an innocent intimacy which Jack would ordinarily not have noticed or been concerned with, but which he found, now, to be an incensing, infuriating, deliberate gesture. He was being taunted; he held his temper in check.
‘Tell me something,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Why do you need her so much? Greenface. She doesn’t want to be with you; she doesn’t seem to need to be with you. Why do you need her?’
‘She has something that belongs to me,’ was the grim answer from the clay-cracked face.
‘Tell me …’
Shade giggled, tugged at Baalgor’s ear, then whispered to him. The man said. ‘The talisman of Estradel. A sword, its blade polished from obsidian, inscribed over the generations with the charms and sorcery of the Estradoth. Its grip is fashioned from …’
Breaking off, he turned slightly to the girl, who again whispered in his ear.
‘From the green-veined ivory of the One-Horn, the pommel surmounted with the crystal egg of the Forgotten Bird of Orax.’
Shade was still whispering.
‘When the sword kills, it passes magic into the corpse; such corpses, when resurrected–’
‘Enough!’ Jack said wearily.
Greyface grinned. ‘What fun. What fancy. Obsidian is a good stone, I remember hearing of it. I’ve never touched it.’
‘Nor, I imagine, have you resurrected a corpse containing that small fragment of magic. The living dead, walking the deserts among the forgotten tombs, doing your bidding.’
‘You remember the tale, then?’
‘I made my childhood fortune describing what I saw of you and the woman. You ran through places that to me were pure fantasy! I created stories to go with the visions.’
‘I know. Some of the powers you described were astonishing to dream. They gave me hope. I was born with the talent to scour, to skin, to shape shadows. It was what they put in me. It was magic, but it was – is – mine.’
It occurred to Jack, now, why Shade’s words had sounded so familiar. She was speaking in terms, and in the style, with which he had always told his stories.
He said, ‘What I saw never made much sense to me, but the visions were vivid, colourful, adventurous …’
‘I liked the stories you told,’ Greyface said. ‘More than your daughter does, although she remembers every detail of them. Don’t you?’
He teased the girl for a moment and Natalie laughed, clinging on to the broad shoulders, watching her estranged father with cruel disdain from the restraining grip of the man she adored.
Greyface went on, ‘When you told them as a child yourself, I imagine I heard them, but in dreams, or in visions of my own. We were running very hard. The bull was always very close. The hunter was always closer to us than we realized, moving through a land to which we had no gate. It was always behind us, and we had to run faster than a star falls. We were constantly in terror, constantly on the alert. I became aware of someone, or some place, drawing us close. Odd dreams, strange music, lands I had never seen nor could imagine, names that were very foreign, cold winters I had never experienced, lush, stinking, shadowy forests that were unlike the great, scented cedar forests of my own country …’
Forests of Cedar? The Middle East!
‘My sister experienced them too. Stop it!’
This admonition was to Natalie, who was squirming and trying to get into the big man’s arms, hanging onto the long hair, causing pain. Greyface cradled the child, swaying slightly, rocking as if trying to get her to sleep. Shade curled into the foul cloak against his breast, completely content.
The Bull-runner never took his gaze away from Jack.
‘It was you, of course. God to our mortal lives. The dream to our sleeping hours. The hope beyond our waking nightmare. We followed your call blindly, not knowing who or what it was that beckoned to us. But when we passed the gate I saw you clearly, and knew you for the mortal man you are. You are nothing special!’
‘I know. I never chimed to be.’
‘You are nothing but a carrier of the old dream, the place to which we escaped. And having run the dream, I escaped from it easily, and Nemet could have too, but she was frightened to find that her great hope was nothing but a lie, a land so remote from her own land that it had no meaning. She had courage, but not enough. And she had too much remorse, which is why she is running home. But she can never undo the wrong. Not without me.’
‘Then why don’t you return as well? And leave my dream. Let me live my life in peace.’
‘Catch!’ the man said, and Shade was flung towards him, screaming. Jack caught the girl who at once raked his face with her nails, struggling out of his arms and running back to the stone guardians. She vanished into the gloom of the mausoleum and Greyface folded his arms.
‘If you spill water on the ground, can you bring it back to the cup? Of course not. If you put fire into a woman, can you stop the rising of new wings? Of course not. I was put into my mother’s belly by fire and stone, marked to be born, to be raised, to be sent to the sanctuary wall. Likewise my sister …’
‘I don’t understand. The sanctuary wall? Which sanctuary? Where? When? Where were the Cedar Forests?’
‘…But we grew too fast, we grew too close. We were too aware. We learnt what was happening to us, and we planned to escape. We learnt how to destroy. And what we destroyed can never be undestroyed. To go back is to die. To go forward is to live, even though we are a lifetime’s walk or more from our beginning place.’
‘Then why do
n’t you go ahead alone? Or do you love her?’ The question seemed to stun Baalgor, or perhaps to confuse him. But after a moment he shook his head, as if pityingly; and his voice was soft. ‘Of course I love her. Nemet is my sisterwife. We were born to each other; we are a part of each other. I need her. She has the skill of the trail. Without her, I have no proper direction. Without me, she has no courage. No determination! We were born to each other. Which is why she is so hesitant, and why you can persuade her. Otherwise – the art of direction can still be raised in the young. Those skills, too, were born to me. And bit by bit I shall create a new sisterwife from your daughter. She led you through the city without difficulty. Without her, you would have been hopelessly lost. She’s begun to learn, to understand the trail. It’s a beginning, but there is still a long way to go. A great deal of peeling!’
He came up to Jack, reeking of flesh and blood from the cloak. He reached out, grabbing Jack’s hair and twisting his head to left and right. Jack stood still, allowing the pain, the anger. He felt physically helpless, though he could have struggled against the violence. But a deeper confusion made him wait, made him take the brutal touch.
Who are you? Where do you come from? How could I have been your gate?
How do you control my daughter?
He would have to go back into the Deep. He couldn’t bear to think of Natalie running wild with this scalp-cloaked monster.
‘I’ll try again,’ he whispered. ‘Please don’t touch my daughter until I’ve tried again.’
‘Hurry, then,’ said the grey-faced man, releasing Jack and turning to enter the darkness of the temple. ‘Hurry!’
PART SIX
At the Maelstrom’s Edge
25
Winter had come to the Hinterland, but I surfaced from the Midax dream, sheltered and dry in the overleaning bulk of one of the great bulls that guarded the Bull Temple. The landscape was silent and soft with a deep covering of snow. This was a dawn world, now, and the light was harsh and brilliant.