Muezzinland (31 page)

Chapter 23

Muezzinland tore at Nshalla's senses as if she struggled inside a great artificial fishbowl, with all the world swirling around her, distorted, alien, firing bullets of chaos into her mind. Beside her, Gmoulaye was a pale shadow spouting nonsense, then a black rock decked with tribal jewellery, doing her best to avoid the phantasmagorical flak.

Sensory madness.

Then, without warning, normality.

Now Nshalla suffered a panic born of lucidity. The land was too defined, the sky too perfectly cloudless blue, and the mountain cooled air too fresh as it invigorated her lungs and sent her skin to tingling. She was in a place of bliss, empowered by beauty, understanding her unique place inside this unique place. She was Nshalla.

There was nobody like her.

"Ataa Naa Nyongmo," she breathed, "I'm so strong!"

Gmoulaye grunted a reply. "Al-Uzza is with me. I'm sure I can feel her."

Nshalla mocked Gmoulaye. "You know nothing about modern technology. Muezzinland is the creation of the age and only I can really understand it. I'll save Mnada… and the world."

"I can help," offered Gmoulaye, a suspicious tone in her voice.

Nshalla ignored this, knowing her silence would say everything.

A cosmically enhanced Aphrica lay around her, gorgeously deserted, pale yet intense, a landscape empty of people and full of meaning. Somehow it tugged at her heart, as if she had gone south, and home.

"I must find Mnada," she said. "That's my first task. Then all I have to do is work out how the Empress directs the gods. I've got to locate that interface."

Gmoulaye said nothing. She was watching vultures wheel far off.

"Are you listening?" Nshalla asked.

"To the land," Gmoulaye replied.

"Superstitious nonsense," muttered Nshalla under her breath. She spoke louder to add, "Follow me. It's this way." She pointed to a lush valley.

They walked on. Behind them, two huge conifers wafted pine-scented air across them, until a ridge concealed them and they descended into a different landscape, more barren, warmer, scented by hot sand and innumerable varieties of mint.

Nshalla looked down at the sand. "Footprints!" she said.

She bent down to examine them. Gmoulaye lay on her stomach and studied the nearest print from a distance of a few centimetres, muttering invocations for truth and meaning as she did. Nshalla said, "Mnada's been here. These are her prints."

"They seem a little too large," Gmoulaye said.

"Are you telling me I don't know my own sister's foot size?"

"Remember Bouraga Oasis. There I carefully studied Princess Mnada's footprints, and I can recall them now. I do not think these—"

"They are Mnada's," Nshalla confidently said. "Follow me. She's lost here, trying to find a way out. Or perhaps searching for the gods. C'mon!"

Nshalla led the way. The footprints were fresh, set in sand damp from a nearby stream, and they led in the direction of the noontide sun, south, as far as that term had any meaning. Heat baked the land, but from the stream moisture rose like the heady scent of a fine wine. The tinkling chuckle of water soothed Nshalla's apprehensive mind. They hurried on through pools and past copses, the sound of swishing reeds a constant accompaniment. For Nshalla it was as though Muezzinland was a microcosm of Aphrica, there desert, here lushly fragrant, rivered and streamed and all under a heavenly blue dome.

Then the footprints ran out.

"Nothing," murmured Nshalla, gazing at the last print. "Where's she gone?"

"It is as I indicated before," Gmoulaye replied. "We have followed the track of a god, one of human form with the divine ability to fly. Perhaps Tanit from Tunis, or Rang of the Nuer people."

Nshalla felt angry. "No. It was Mnada, I was right about that. Mnada must have… she must have shapeshifted into a bird, or a flying mammal."

"But the footprints are of a different size."

"That's what you think. I know my own sister."

Gmoulaye knelt at the final footprint. "I will perform a rite to discover if Princess Mnada—"

"Oh, I haven't got time for that. Follow me, she went this way."

Nshalla clambered up the shallow bank and entered a wood. Gmoulaye ran to catch up, and said, "Wouldn't it be better if we sat for a few moments and made a proper plan? We could run about all day and find nothing."

Nshalla waved a dismissive hand at Gmoulaye. "Must I?"

"Why not climb to a high peak and scan the land?"

Nshalla stopped walking. That was a fair point. "Oh, all right," she said. "Not that I'm ungrateful, but couldn't you have thought of that earlier?"

"It would have saved so much time," Gmoulaye replied, nodding.

Nshalla struggled to find a reply, but Gmoulaye's sarcasm was so sweet she did not have the patience. Instead, she walked to the edge of the wood and pointed to a nearby hill. "There," she replied. "I bet that's the highest in the land."

"I will follow your lead."

Nshalla led on, irritated by Gmoulaye, but saying nothing more. In the twisted, illusory space of Muezzinland the ten kilometre walk took ten minutes. Truly Nshalla was a god, able to stride across the land like Ataa Naa Nyongmo himself. At the summit of the hill she stood tall, feeling a kilometre high, with binocular vision and the incredible hearing of the civet.

She looked out over Muezzinland. Apart from mountain concealed reaches it all lay in sight, a patchwork of brown and sandy orange, green, black and grey where granite and basalt thrust up from from the rich earth. The horizon curled up like a dish, and there she saw the faintest hints—white flash off a camera lens, red neon shining from an Arabic scroll—of the world outside. But these were phantasms scratching at the super-reality of Muezzinland.

"What am I looking for?" Nshalla asked.

"Princess Mnada can remain a shapeshifter here," replied Gmoulaye, "for it may well be one of her divine attributes. We must look for the extraordinary, the unusual."

Nshalla laughed. "I might as well search for a grain of wheat in a barn. Everything here is freakish."

"Look for the metaphorical. Muezzinland is not reality. With a practised eye—"

"Oh, I see. You mean the tribal,
spiritually aware
eye. Like yours."

Gmoulaye carried on, ignoring the interruption. "You see a landscape, but it represents more than simple earth. In Muezzinland, all the spirits of the aether are possible. A tree could be a god. The sky could be a living entity of software and mathematics. Are our very words now being hardwired into silicon?"

"You're paranoid."

Silence fell for a few minutes. Nshalla watched movement in the plains below. Giraffes? Wildebeast? A couple of lionesses hunting prey?

She looked more closely.

The shape was like a pine, tall with a fiery top, yet it moved like an animal. Remembering Mnada before she entered Muezzinland, Nshalla wondered if this elongated creature might be her sister. Without thought she leaped off the hill and in ten steps was down on the plain.

The shape was vaguely human. It towered over her, arms and hands like black scythes, head like an anvil, a halo of red lightning emanating from it like an electric wig. Just in time she ducked, as what seemed a vast cloud spirit passed over her, with a noise of falling rain and the stench of ozone. Nshalla was about to call out to her sister when she realised what an insignificant character she was compared to this awesome apparition.

The figure of her sister rolled away, darkening the ground, and Nshalla was left with a glimpse of her insignificance. As Gmoulaye approached she buried that glimpse beneath her ego.

"It was Mnada," she told Gmoulaye. "I've got to hatch a plan to capture her. If I could just trick her into remembering who she is…"

Gmoulaye nodded. "There is one answer, which is to use the technique devised by you at Mengoub—"

"The mirror! Yes. But how do I make a mirror big and powerful enough for Mnada to see herself? She's like a Saharan storm. She was icy cold as she rolled over me."

Gmoulaye gazed across the plain to where Mnada stood, cold and grey, like a fat, loose tornado. "Yes, there is a cold front in her wake." She shivered. "Here, she can be a storm."

"Stop rambling," said Nshalla. "I need a plan. A mirror. Could I make one?"

"Al-Uzza—"

"A waterfall!" Nshalla said. "If I find a suitable waterfall, the water against a dark enough rock will act like a mirror. Then all I have to do is become bait. Mnada will see herself, and then…"

Gmoulaye nodded. "The future is cloudy. Your plan has merits, but—"

Nshalla stopped listening. Somewhere in the wood she had heard the roaring of water. There were waterfalls in Aphrica. There would be falls in Muezzinland.

She entered the wood, retracing her steps until she noticed a gnarled conifer, a tree she recognised. She stopped to listen. Hearing a faint roar, she navigated through the trees and undergrowth, until the sound became loud enough to echo through her mind. For the falls were huge. Too big, in fact; the water was white, useless as a mirror. Nshalla cast about along the banks of the river. The land here was harsh, riven with gorges, and there were minor channels along which smaller rivers flowed. Soon she had located a suitable site.

The new waterfall was delicate yet wide, but the water was silty. Angrily she waded into the river and splashed about, willing the silt to fall to the bottom. Promptly, it did. She grinned. She had powers.

"The rivers do my bidding," she called out. "Faro, do you hear me? You tried to drown me in Mengoub. Come now, and do battle with me!" The power she felt quite intoxicated her, and she fell backwards, breathing underwater like a fish, snorting out bubbles, sucking the river into her stomach, her lungs, her being, then expelling it, and jumping out dry as a nut onto the land.

The waterfall was about twenty metres across. Now that the water was clear, the black volcanic rock behind it acted like the base of a mirror. Nshalla could see herself clearly, her reflection wobbling, in places flecked, but recognisable. So Mnada would see herself.

A panting Gmoulaye approached. "You went on too fast," she said.

"Wait," Nshalla ordered, holding out a hand. "I am about to bait the trap. Hide under that leaf, and make no sound."

"Prin—"

"Quiet!"

Nshalla turned to face the river, tilting her face to the sky. "Sister!" she shouted. "Mnada, I am here! Come to me!"

She waited. The sky remained cloudless and blue.

A minute passed.

"Sister, Mnada!" she called out. She took the deepest breath she could and shouted, "I am here!"

A shadow darkened the eastern sky. Cumulus rolled in with time-lapse rapidity, then darker clouds on a piercing wind. Nshalla hugged herself. Her sister was coming.

Raindrops fell. Moments later a grey cloud spirit hovered above the river down from the falls. Nshalla waded out, standing on the upper edge, the water foaming at her thighs, enticing her sister in. "Come to me. You can reach me."

The cloud form acquired human characteristics, the scything arms, the anvil head, then became something altogether more human, with a face, sad eyes, a small person weeping, finally an ordinary woman struggling in the river. A drowning woman.

Mnada had once again seen herself. Nshalla dived into the waters and rescued her sister, struggling against the now torrential flow of the river, for the storm had raised its level, and the appearance of Mnada had reduced Nshalla's stature.

They lay on the river bank, gasping for breath.

Mnada seemed to have stabilised. She was a simple human being again. Nshalla felt no awe, nor even fear as she said, "Well, here we both are inside Muezzinland."

"You will die here," Mnada replied. "Only I can survive."

"Nonsense," Nshalla said. "Here I can do anything."

"That is the problem."

But Nshalla could not see the problem with her new abilities. Intently, she said, "Somewhere in Muezzinland there'll be an interface. We have to find it quickly. The gods are here too, and mother can still direct them through that interface. Don't you see we have to act fast?"

"I do agree." Mnada sighed. "Yes, speed is vital."

Nshalla detected a hidden meaning. "How vital?"

"I have seen myself in the water mirror, but I can't stay like this for long. Muezzinland tears at me, driving me on, forcing me to act out my wishes. I want to control it, yet I can't." Tears fell down her cheeks as she continued, "It's a hopeless task. Years and years ago, I told mother I wanted to come here. Now I know why. I'm an addict. I'm addicted to myself. And I can never, ever be cured."

"How do you mean?"

"Nshalla, I don't know what I am. I don't know who I am. I can never know those things. My life will be an endless search for something completely unattainable. So mother has made me. You're similar in one sense, though without my intensity. You will never be normal."

"Actually I don't want to be normal," said Nshalla, casually.

"Don't fool yourself."

Nshalla frowned, felt the heat of anger within her. "Is there a point to all this?"

"Speed," said a new voice.

It was Gmoulaye. She had cast aside her clothes and applied natural pigments to her skin. From somewhere she had acquired, or made, primitive jewellery; wood, dried reed, feathers, all hung on fragments of natural twine.

"It's our tribal messenger," Nshalla said. "So you've reverted to your old ways, have you?"

Gmoulaye made some private gesture, then replied, "I remain with Al-Uzza. These beads are dedicated to her eyes, these feathers to her hair. I go naked because that is what the Goddess intended."

"Uncivilised wretch," Nshalla muttered.

"We need to act fast," continued Gmoulaye, clambering down the bank to sit beside them. "The Empress knows we are inside Muezzinland. Via the gods she has the power to control both Muezzinland and any global software that takes her fancy. This interface—"

"Yes, yes, I've been though all that," interrupted Nshalla. "We have to find the interface and disrupt it."

Mnada turned to them and said, "Then we must find the gods."