Scenting Hallowed Blood (40 page)

‘
You must be shrived of
your sins, my son,’ he had said. ‘You shall be banished into the
wilderness, and through your suffering shall expiate the
transgressions of your brethren. Your sacrifice shall be that of
comfort and warmth, and the love of your people. But when you have
suffered enough and have learned true humility, you must return and
instruct the Watchers in piety.’

Ashamed at having been caught
with his human lover, Shemyaza, young and devout, had thanked Anu
for his mercy. He forced himself to view Ishtahar, his beloved, as
a wicked seductress, who had tempted him with evil. He expelled
from his mind all memory of their love and the happiness it gave
them. She was a black and crawling thing, greedy and corrupt. Only
the privations of exile could burn the contamination of her from
his body and soul.

On the day of the sacrifice,
Anu’s serpent priests had stripped Shemyaza naked and rubbed his
body with golden dust, so that he shone like the sun. They led him
to the plateau that overlooked the savage lands and there a goat
with gilded horns was sacrificed in his honour. They anointed the
shining body of Shemyaza with the goat’s blood, to give him the
speed and agility of the animal as he roamed the wilderness. The
blood also represented the sins of himself and his brothers, and
those of the humans who had transgressed with them. Maidens sang
and rattled bells as the blood was painted onto his skin. He had
been drugged with the secret of the poppy, and smiled like an
imbecile, his heart full of love and joy and the fierce desire to
transcend his sin. The highest lords and ladies of the settlement
came one by one to kiss his gilded lips, until Anu himself stepped
forward. He took Shemyaza’s chin in his hand and said, ‘Carry these
sins out into the barren land, my most beautiful son. Purge
yourself of them, and all who sinned shall be likewise purged. What
has begun may be reversed.’

‘I will, Father.’

Anu smiled gently and brushed
his lips over Shemyaza’s mouth. ‘Most beloved of my children,’ he
said, and lifted Shemyaza in his arms. The Lord was taller than all
other Anannage. In his hold, Shemyaza seemed no larger than a
child.

There was no struggle. Anu
carried his son to the edge of the plateau and then, as if
releasing a captive bird, threw him into the air.

The gathering hurried to watch
Shemyaza’s fall. His drugged body bounced and jerked down the long
slope of loose scree that led to the wilderness. Presently, all
that could be seen was a smudge of gold and red, and the body lay
still, its limbs sprawled out like a discarded puppet. Anu raised
his arms, ‘Rejoice my people. Take meat and drink in my son’s
honour!’ And the sacrificial goat was skinned and gutted, spitted
and placed over a fire. Servants carried great barrels of wine out
into the open. Soon, the plateau rang to the sounds of merriment
and celebration.

Shemyaza, hanging onto life far
below, heard these sounds. He had expected a beatific experience,
something like astral flight, but now he lay broken and bleeding,
discarded upon the rocks. He resented the sound of feasting above
him. No-one knew whether he was dead or alive, and he realised it
didn’t matter. He had made the sacrifice. Now they could breathe
more easily, sure that Anu’s rage was appeased.
I will not
die,
Shemyaza thought, energised by rage.
I will survive and
return.

He lay there, unmoving, until
the sun sank behind the mountains. His mouth was dry and he was
delirious with thirst. His skin had been blistered by the
relentless heat. His brain and body throbbed with indescribable
pain. His soul was withered with grief and stupefied amazement at
what had been done to him. Only his will could keep him alive. As a
cool tongue of breeze whispered over the desert, promising the
sharper fangs of chilly night, Shemyaza crawled from the scree.
Naked, he went out into the wilderness, a bitter, desolate and
lonely creature. He was beyond pain and his vision was stripped of
its serpent scales. There could be no illusion. He had not been
honoured, but scorned. Others feasted above him, as guilty as he of
transgression, yet he had held out his arms to carry all of their
sins. Without remorse, they had handed them over.
Take our
shame, take it, that we may live and earn our father’s pleasure
once more.

Like Cain, Shemyaza haunted the
desert. For many days he staggered brokenly through day and night,
burned by the sun, scalded by the ice of midnight. His wounds
festered and raged upon his body. His cracked ribs screamed their
fury. Each dawn, he licked scant moisture from the leaves of
spindly plants and occasionally fell upon a small, desert creature
and devoured it.

Eventually, he came upon a
tribe of primitive people. These were not like the lowland folk,
whom Anu’s people had adopted and educated. They were violent,
ignorant creatures, true savages. They were nomadic and fought
brutal wars with other wandering tribes. Being close to animals,
their instincts advised them not to kill the blistered, blackened
figure that lurched out of the heat-haze towards their huddle of
tents. He was abnormally tall, and an invisible fire burned all
around him. The people knew the legends of the angels who lived in
the High Place beyond the desert. When an angel fell from the
clouds, the speed of his flight burned his skin and seared away his
wings.

They circled Shemyaza
cautiously as he staggered forward, and watched him, curious and
patient.

For three days, he sat upon the
parched ground just beyond their settlement, and refused to utter a
word. The women brought him bowls of goat’s milk, which he picked
up with his withered hands and gulped from greedily. His face was
scored with the wounds of the elements, but his eyes burned fierce
and blue, like a mad child’s eyes. His hair was bleached white and
hung to his waist in coarse tangles. It was his only garment. In
places, his blackened skin shone gold, as if the pollen of his
ruined wings still clung to him. One of the young men was brave
enough to approach him and poke him cautiously with a wooden staff.
Shemyaza bared his frightening white teeth in a snarl and the young
man’s staff burst aflame. All those who saw this put their faces
against the ground.

There was no doubt now that
this man had come down from the High Place where the angels lived.
He had come to them.

On the third day, Shemyaza
grabbed hold of one of the girls who brought him food, threw her
down upon the dusty ground and, in full view of her astonished
playmates, stormed the gates of her body’s temple. A group of
tribesmen ran up and down like anxious jackals some feet away from
him, unsure whether to intervene or not. The girl, who was already
used to such treatment from her brothers, lay quiescent beneath
him. When he was replete, he tossed the girl aside and stood
up.

‘I am naked!’ he said in the
human tongue. ‘Bring me garments.’

After this, the women brought
him a dark robe and gave him meat to eat. The whole community
sensed his power and his energy. He told them to build him a
dwelling, and gave them specific instructions on its dimensions. It
must be ten cubits high, thirty cubits long and twelve cubits
wide.

‘I do not want to stoop and
cower in my own tent,’ he told them. ‘I want to stand up
straight.’

The dwelling was constructed of
wooden frames, fitted together to form a rectangular structure. It
was covered in swathes of finely woven fabric, over which were
stretched goatskins and the hides of rams, which were dyed red. It
was open at the eastern end, but screened by a heavy curtain.
Within, drapes of fine linen created a private sanctuary for him,
where his took his sleep. Around the dwelling, was an open
courtyard, surrounded by linen curtains on a framework of bronze
posts and silver rods.

While his new home was being
constructed, Shemyaza lived among the dry rocks, some distance from
the settlement. He would speak to no-one, but accepted food from
the people. Once the dwelling was built, Shemyaza moved into it. He
washed away the grime and dust of the desert and the crusts fell
from his wounds. Beneath it, he was a man of bronze, whose hair was
a halo of light. The tribes-people, being dark and swarthy, had
never beheld such beauty. Shemyaza became obsessed with fastidious
cleanliness. He required all those who attended him to wash
themselves in ritual fashion, and gave specific instructions
concerning the preparation of his food. Occasionally, when someone
angered him with inattention to detail, he remembered how to summon
a blaze of energy, and blasted the miscreant on the spot. The
people believed that he called down fire from heaven. He became a
hard, dark god, and the people revered him.

After a year, Shemyaza’s hot
madness cooled, and he decided to make his adopted people great.
Anu had nurtured the lowland people; Shemyaza would evolve his own
race of followers. Like the gentle lowlanders, they needed to be
educated and brought on. First, he taught them about weapons and
the arcana of forging metal. Then he instructed them in the
strategies of battle. During this time, he took their women to his
bed and spawned monstrous children with them. It became necessary
to teach the wise women of the tribe how to cut open a woman’s
belly, so that a child too large for natural birth could be
delivered. In his dwelling, he heard the screams of the women as
the knives cut their flesh, or the screams of those who were too
afraid of the knife and allowed the child to tear them apart as it
fought its way into the world.

Shemyaza sent his armies out
into the desert wilderness and beyond, and many cities fell before
them. He taught them how to shatter the thickest walls with the
sorcery of sounds. He taught them how to instil panic and fear in
the hearts of their enemies. When his people angered him, he
punished them with leprosy and pestilence, instilling the thoughts
of disease into their gullible minds, so that they took root and
blossomed in sores and sickness. But when his people pleased him,
he gave them the gift of euphoria and victory in battle. He
bestowed dark wisdom and made legends of their warriors. All the
time, he kept his identity secret. The tribespeople guarded the
mystery of their powerful god, held it close to their hearts, and
although rumours of their sorcery abounded in adjacent lands,
no-one uncovered the true source of their power.

After seven years, Shemyaza
knew it was time to return to Kharsag. He told his people that,
wherever they travelled, they should continue to erect his tent for
him, but that henceforth only his spirit would dwell within it.

‘I have made of you a great and
powerful race,’ he told them. ‘Now, you must learn to rule
yourselves.’

He wrapped himself in a dark
robe and covered his face with a black scarf. Carrying only a staff
and a water leather, he walked back towards the mountains of his
birth.

At first, Shemyaza was welcomed
by his people like a Prodigal Son. Anu wept when Shemyaza came to
him in his Hall of Meetings. They embraced as father and son, and
Anu ordered that a great feast be prepared. But although Shemyaza
smiled and kissed his brethren, who all seemed so joyous to see him
alive, his heart was no longer the molten gold of love, but the
hard rock of experience. He gazed about the Garden, which once had
so delighted him, and saw it for what it was. The Anannage danced
and feasted in delusion, ignoring the hard, bitter reality beyond
the mountains. Famine, disease and war raged out there, but the
Anannage chose to believe that all humanity were as the meek
lowland folk, who humbly obeyed the commands of the serpent people.
Their oasis of learning, with its bright water and viridian fields,
was a hollow conceit.

Anu sensed a change in
Shemyaza, but put it down to maturity. Physically, he was very
different from the pale, attenuated creature who had been hurled
over the cliff. His skin was no longer soft and white, but seamed
and weathered. His beauty was no longer puerile, but fierce. His
mind was like an armoury now, and his tongue was the sharpest
blade. Although he did not contradict Anu and his viziers outright,
he earned a reputation for asking awkward questions. Subtly, he
brought their attention to issues that the Lords of Kharsag would
rather ignore. Anu was entertained by this, although others at the
Mountain House were nervous of Shemyaza’s bluntness. One day, Anu
would take offence.

For another seven years,
Shemyaza existed as a bright but challenging star of the Anannage.
During this time, he took a vizier for himself, the boy Daniel, who
had been groomed from infancy for his role. Daniel had been marked
for the Mountain House, but Shemyaza asked Anu if he might take
Daniel for himself. Anu agreed to this, perhaps thinking his dour
son needed company, and that Daniel, being lovely, might bring
perfume back to Shemyaza’s barren bedchamber. Since his return, he
had lain with neither male nor female, spending all of his time in
trance or speaking with the Elders, who were beyond this world.

When Daniel was sixteen, and
convinced his Lord would never touch him in love, Shemyaza
initiated him into the ways of the flesh. His friends, privately,
rejoiced. Perhaps soon some of Shemyaza’s former carefree abandon
might reappear. He never went down to the lowlands.

Then, one day, perhaps as a
test, Anu sent Shemyaza down to the house of Hebob, the father of
Ishtahar. Shemyaza did not appear concerned about this request,
exhibiting neither eagerness nor reluctance. In his heart, he felt
safe, for he did not expect to find his lost love still living in
the house of her father. Fourteen years had passed. Now, she would
be married, with a host of brats around her skirts, her beauty all
used up and withered away. But as he stepped into the courtyard
outside Hebob’s dwelling, with Daniel at his side, he saw her come
round the side of the building. She held a pannier under one arm,
and her long black hair hung loose over her linen-swathed breasts.
Although she wore her years on her face, her beauty had
intensified. Shemyaza’s heart stopped in his chest for the space of
two beats. She saw him and equally started, her eyes widening,
although her mouth became a grim line. Words passed between them
without sound. She was a prisoner of her father’s house, a slave to
the temple because of her power as an oracle and channel. Her
commerce with Shemyaza had brought her a strange reputation; she
was both feared and shunned. No man would marry her, or wanted to
plough the ground where Shemyaza had sown his seed.