The Scarab Path (34 page)

‘Fir,’
Che suggested, and the woman nodded ponderously.

‘It
brings true visions, echoes of the past, a sight of the Masters perhaps. There
is nothing else in the world. It is our only link with our birthright and
heritage.’ She had reached out for the halfbreed man to give her a pot in which
something glistened. ‘O Foreigner,’ said Mother, ‘having come so far at the
call of your blood, will you not eat Fir with us?’

Che
glanced back at Trallo, who was staring wide-eyed. For the first time ever her
capable Solarnese guide seemed out of his depth.

Why else have I come so far, if not for this?

‘Let me
eat of it,’ she agreed. ‘I need to understand.’

Mother
extended her hand and the halfbreed man drew a small blade delicately over one
thick finger so that a drop of her blood fell into the pot. Then he lanced his
own hand and did likewise, before passing the pot to the three Khanaphir. His
dark eyes were fixed on Che all the while.

The pot
came to her, and they watched her patiently until she took out her own knife,
pricked at her thumb and shook a drop of blood into it. The halfbreed retrieved
the vessel jealously, as though she might run off with it, and with his blade
stirred the viscous contents, the red droplets streaking and blurring into the
clear jelly.

He
finally passed the pot to Mother, whose eyes were now closed in naked
anticipation. She stuck two fingers into the thick mess and drew them out,
gleaming with a gob of slime. With a hedonistic shiver, she licked it from her
hand.

The pot
was passed around, each of the dingy celebrants taking a share, and now it was
back with Che. She stared into it, fighting down bile, having no idea what the
Fir consisted of, even before it was tainted with blood. Mother was already
shuddering, eyes firmly closed while the others seemed to be falling one by one
into a trance.

Che had
scooped some up, without even realizing it, her hand responding to no conscious
command. Out of some bizarre consideration she put the pot down, lest she spill
some.

She
raised the hand to her mouth. The Fir was odourless, colourless, sticky and
dense. She closed her eyes, already gagging.
I came here,
so I must do this. I wanted to learn the secrets of Khanaphes
.

With a
jerky, convulsive movement she put the smeared fingers into her mouth. The
slime was so salt and sweet she almost choked, but she swallowed it down,
shuddering and retching.

She
looked round for Trallo to tell him something, but whatever she had been going
to say was already gone from her mind. He was now too far away to hear, anyway,
sliding further and further into the gloom of the tent, as the oppressive heat
of the Marsh Alcaia lifted from her, and she fell into time.

For a
long while she just sat there, still falling but unable to move, feeling the
rushing of the world as it left her on all sides at great speed. Eventually she
recovered her balance, as though she had discovered some other Art of flight to
arrest that endless descent.

As she
stepped out of the dingy tent, she could not have said whether it was herself
moving, or whether the world had just been diverted sideways. All around her
the Marsh Alcaia was disintegrating, stripping itself down to its struts and
poles, as though a great host of invisible locusts had descended on it, tearing
the fabric away as she watched. Soon even the poles themselves were gone, and
she was turning towards the city itself. The great statues of the Estuarine
Gate seemed to glow with a white fire as she passed them by, and she was
walking on the river itself, and it seemed natural that she should do so.

Khanaphes
had begun fading. In sections and pieces, the clutter of low buildings was
losing substance, passing away, leaving only broad avenues and arcaded
promenades between the great palaces and temples that had been the original
Khanaphes. The city now transformed itself, whilst staying intrinsically the
same, merely sweeping away all the accumulated detritus of five hundred years.

She
sensed a presence, a collective presence, whose mind filled the city
completely. The Masters remained invisible to her, but she was touched by their
attention – the entire city was blanketed in it – and she knew that, after she
woke, its absence would seem as shocking as a broken tooth.

Let me see you
, she thought, as the streets and walls of
Khanaphes wheeled and darted around her, but they were always around each
corner, just out of sight.

The city
was hard to focus on, its edges blurred, the light it radiated painfully
bright.
Perhaps this is the city’s memory of itself, before
the march of years eroded it all away
. She moved close to one wall,
trying to discern the carvings embellishing it, and in this half-dream they
were words, as clear and comprehensible as a book written only yesterday. She
read and read, the histories and learning of ages, and yet nothing stayed with
her. The understanding flowed into and out of her head like a stream that
barely disturbed the pebbles of her mind.

Is this it? Is this the Profanity?
This sad half-life,
this feeling of meaningless wonder. Was this what the Fir-eaters craved? She
thought of their tent, their faces.
It is not real, this,
but it is more palatable than their reality
.

She
found the square before the Scriptora, lying open and bright. The city eddied
and turned about her but something kept her here, some nagging feeling, until
she realized it was wrong.
Where is the pyramid?
she
asked.
Where are the statues?
In the centre of the
square there was nothing but an old well.
Is this not even
the real city? Is this all some hallucination?
There was now a bitter
taste in her mouth.

Is this no more than a common vice? Have I been fooled again?

Yet I am thinking very clearly, for a dream-vision
. She
looked around the square once more.
If I were dreaming
this, it would be as I had already seen it
. She suddenly had the feeling
that this was indeed the reality, that the place she had seen and remembered
was the falsehood.

I do not carry their precious blood, how can I? Is this vice
wasted on me?
But she knew, with the absolute certainty of dreams, that
what the Fir-eaters saw as a bloodline was something more tenuous. It was to do
with Aptitude. It was some old strain of the Inapt that they laid claim to,
some persistent reminder of those old, old days.

Show me!
she called out, and the voices of the city said,
We have shown you
. She drifted towards the Scriptora, and
found Khanaphir men and women there, bent over tablets, scribing industriously.
She thought she saw Ethmet there, too, or someone that looked very like him.
These are the Ministers, back in the days when they were no more
than servants of the Masters, but where are the Masters themselves?

Is that really what you are looking for, little one?

Her mind
was full of voices and she felt a spurt of panic when she realized she could
not tell which was her own. The thoughts flitted in and out of her, free as
flies.

What am I looking for?
She was catching thoughts with her
bare hands, holding them, as they crawled and buzzed. What did the Masters of
Khanaphes matter to her, truly? She had become so distracted by the means that
she had forgotten the end. She had not come here to meet the Masters, for all
that they were just out of sight, forever in the corner of her eye. She had
travelled here to come to terms with her own nature – and to reach a détente
with her ghost.

Achaeos!
she cried.
Achaeos, you led me
here, so come forth now and speak to me
. She did not know for sure
whether she could survive regaining him here in this dream-place, only to lose
him again. Perhaps this would be the end of it. She would take his hand once
more, embrace him one last time, look into those white eyes of his, and then
she would die and be with him, wherever the Inapt went after they shed their
bodies.

Please, Achaeos, I love you, but I cannot continue living like
this. Either come forth and show me what you need, or leave me. I cannot stand
in twilight for ever, between what I was and what I am
.

But no
grey-robed figure came towards her in that flickering, painful light. She
shouted out in frustration and anger:
You brought me here!
You drove me here! Now come forth, I demand it!

The city
fell very quiet as the echoes of her unspoken words rolled back and forth
across the walls of the Scriptora. The scribing Beetles were gone, even the
presence of the Masters seemed to have drawn further back.

Achaeos?
she asked, tentatively, because she was now sure
that
something
was approaching.

The
earth before her cracked open, the stones of the antique well shifting as
something began to claw its way up the shaft. Without transition, Che felt very
afraid of what it was that she had awoken.
It is not
Khanaphes that I have called up: it is something within me
. She wanted
to flee, but the cracking earth about the well-mouth was hypnotic, and she
could not tear herself away. The
thing
rushing
upwards sounded like distant thunder on the edge of hearing.

Achaeos … help me …
she thought, and the thunder grew more
and more urgent, getting closer without ever becoming louder, and she knew that
whatever it was had now reached the very lip and was about to burst forth in
all its force and fury.

There
was nothing, only silence, but Che was not fooled. She knew that it was waiting
at the very lip of the well.

A single
tendril reached up from the darkness, quested briefly in the air, then arced
downwards to dig into the sundered earth. She saw it was a briar, studded with
thorns, and the sight of it instantly turned her stomach. She managed a single
step back …

Another
followed it, and then another, coiling and twisting as they were liberated into
the open air. A darkness clung to them that she well remembered.

Oh no, oh no no no …

Something
else came out, unfolding and then unfolding again – a great hinged arm, hooked
and barbed, that clutched at the well’s edge and tore the stones loose. The
ground bucked and buckled, something vast ripping its way free. She saw long
antennae spring upwards, another raptorial arm, then a triangular head with
immense eyes burning with a green fire. Pierced and re-pierced by those arching
thorns, the mantis lurched its way out of its chrysalis of earth, and Che felt a
silent wail of horror in her mind.

The Darakyon … he was touching the Darakyon when he died. Have
they
taken
him now? Is that why he needs me?

The
mantis’s killing arms wept blood, and its monstrous eyes were fixed on her as
the thorns continued to penetrate its flesh, riddling it with wounds. This was
the true Darakyon, the very personification of all Mantis-kinden fury and pride
and futility.

Run
, came a voice in her head, and she turned and ran, but
the monstrous thing was immediately on her heels, red blood spilling from the
myriad wounds the thorns had bored in its carapace, the shadows of its claws
raking the ground on either side of her. She had called out first to Achaeos,
but in the end she had just called – and she had awoken the ghost of the mad, embittered
Darakyon instead.

Che felt
something lurch in her stomach, a sudden feeling of disorientation. The bright
light was dimming … The monster that had been about to seize her in its jagged
arms was suddenly very far away, receding and receding. She felt dizzy,
nauseous, impossibly weak. The enclosed, baking air surrounded her again, amid
the tatty gloom of the tent. She collapsed on its floor, and heard again the
husky voice of the halfbreed woman they called Mother.

‘She has
the touch of the Masters. She has it as pure as I have ever known,’ and then,
after a moment’s smothering of any conscience, the woman ordered, ‘Kill her.
Kill her and take her blood.’

Che
tried to reach for her sword, but her arm was leaden. She heard a shout and
something passed over her, Trallo lunging knife-first and wings a-blur. There
was a hoarse cry of pain, and Trallo cried out again, words this time.

‘Now!’
he was yelling. ‘Now! Come on!’

She
could barely turn her head, just heard a scuffle and the cursing. Her vision
was eclipsed and she saw the halfbreed man loom over her. His teeth were bared
into a snarl and his dagger was raised high.

Achaeos!
she called, and she would not have cared if the
Darakyon had answered her again.

For a
second the interior of the tent was lit by unbearable brightness, then a wind
seemed to hurl the halfbreed away from her. Che heard the woman known as Mother
begin to scream in rage and grief. Trallo staggered away past her, bleeding
across the scalp. One of the Khanaphir came after him, but again there was that
burst of pure light, and the bald man reeled back, his chest just a blackened
hole. Mother kept screaming and screaming.

‘Che!
Che, get up!’ Trallo was shouting at her, pulling at her arm. She made all the
effort she could, her limbs like jelly. Someone grabbed hold of her, strong
hands digging under her arms to haul her to her feet. She was leaning against
someone, as her world swam. Her stomach was squirming with the abomination she
had swallowed. She tried desperately to focus, to see who had come for her.

‘Achaeos?’
she asked.

‘Not
Achaeos,’ said a clipped voice in her ear, and then they were out of the tent –
out into the confusing underwater colours of the Marsh Alcaia – and the world
was swimming, spinning around her, and she could hold on to it no longer.