Langoisse’s friends humoured him in his fantasies and speculations, the sober Quintus as much as any.
It was, of course, to Quintus that Noell turned for solace and a sense of purpose. It was with Quintus that he discussed the passing of every day; what he had learned and what he hoped to know. But it was Quintus who was most excessively plagued and pestered by the vampires of Adamawara, who never supped his blood but sought instead to drain him of every thought his mind possessed. He, much more than Noell, was the one whose words they valued, the one whose memory they respected. Though he was not as sick as Langoisse, the journey had taken a heavy toll of Quintus too. The monk did not like to make an exhibition of his distress, but Noell was often reminded of the fact that this was an old man, nearly run to the end of his due threescore-years-and-ten, and that exhaustion of body and spirit was so near that only courage and endurance were keeping it at bay.
Noell asked himself whether any of them could even begin to contemplate a return to Burutu, let alone to Gaul. Appearance argued that they were condemned to measure out their years in this strangest of all the world’s prisons. Noell recognised that in spite of his relative youth and considerable physical resources he was only half the man he once had been, and that there could be no guarantee that he would recover his own strength and wholeness. As the days went by, routine stifled initiative, and Noell grew use to his captivity. He gave no offence to his hosts, and lost sight of the thought that there might be any further advantage to be gained by what he was doing. Even when Kantibh first named the day of Ogo-Ejodun, it seemed far off, and no great cause for anticipation and excitement, but the interval passed smoothly, uninhibited by any impatience, and the hour eventually came when Noell and Quintus were invited to cross the valley for the first time. Langoisse was too weak to make the journey, and Leilah stayed to watch over him, but Ngadze was brought into the party, as one whose place in the Adamawaran scheme was yet to be determined. Of Ntikima there was no sign; he was nowhere to be found in the place of the aitigu.
They began the descent to the great valley of Adamawara shortly after dawn, on winding stone staircases inside the mountain. Eventually, they emerged into the morning light, on an inclined path. Wherever the way was uncomfortably steep, steps had been cut to ease their passage. When the path turned on itself, as it did every hundred yards or so, the turning had been worked by stonemasons, and boulders were usually left on the rim, so that anyone sliding down the slope would not slip over the edge of the platform without having a chance to arrest his fall.
The closer they came to the floor of the valley the vaster it seemed. The further mountain ridges seemed to retreat, and this illusion was enhanced by the purple haze which cloaked them. The valley itself, by contrast, seemed the more full of life the closer they approached. Its fields of green and yellow came into sharper focus, so that they could see the crowns of the trees in the orchards, and the rows of dazoes, bean-plants, ground-nuts and egg-plant bushes.
Though he had passed before through African lands under intensive cultivation, near to the city of Benin, Noell had seen nothing remotely resembling the fields of Adamawara. Throughout the lands of the Kwarra delta the tribesmen lived in relatively small towns and villages, each cultivating only a few acres; the climate would not permit any other way of doing things. The tropic soil was exhausted very quickly, and the depredations of pests and weeds were difficult to resist. Fields and orchards like those of Adamawara would normally require the fulltime attention of dozens of workers apiece. Here, if Noell’s count of the white-clad toilers could be trusted, one man or woman could do the labour that would elsewhere require five or six. If the land all around was poisoned, why was the soil within the crater so good? Had the giant gnarled trees once extended their gloomy dominion over this land too, gradually cleared away by the labour of generations of tribesmen? He had to remind himself yet again that men and vampires had lived here for thousands of years, uninterrupted by invasions from without and, so far as he knew, undisturbed by strife and dissent within.
When they reached the foot of the cliff they found small horses waiting for them. Though the animals were bridled with rope they had no saddles or stirrups, and it was clear that they would move at a sedate pace. Kantibh rode at the head of their column, with the vampire who had brought the summons from the elders beside him. Quintus and Noell came next, with Ngadze behind them and two servants in the rear.
The villages of the people who lived on the valley floor were not stockaded or walled about in any way at all. Their huts were rounded, their conical roofs very squat. The villagers carried no weapons, and the men and women worked alongside one another in the fields. Wherever the horsemen went the villagers would stop to watch them pass, and small children would often follow them for a mile or more, running alongside the horses, calling out in their own tongue. Occasionally, Kantibh or one of his rearguard would shoo them away with shouts, but not roughly.
The heat was not oppressive at this altitude, and they had their straw hats to keep the sun from their faces, so the journey was not uncomfortable. They ate a midday meal in one of the villages, which was near the shore of the lake. Noell was glad to find that the lake had a large population of wading birds: the first birds he had seen in many a month. Their presence made the valley seem a little less alien. He concluded that the waters of the lake were rich in fish, though there were no boats on the water, and he saw no sign of fishing-nets in the village where they rested.
Beyond the lake the land changed its character, being no longer under such intensive cultivation. There were villages, but not so many, and the people seemed not to be involved in growing their own food, but rather in following other crafts, including the preparation of palm products, the making of pots, the carving of wood and a certain amount of metal-working. Long before the sun had descended to the rim of the western ridge they began the approach to Iletigu, the place of the elders. The eastern ridge of the valley was by no means so sheer or so high as the western one, and was rather different in character, there being many shale slopes and rocky screes, with loose boulders aggregating in clefts where poor soil supported meagre thorn-bushes and patches of parched grass. They followed a road, of sorts, worn by the passage of countless hooves and feet, with occasional cuttings which testified to the labours of men in times long past. Eventually, this road brought them to the so-called place of the finished.
This was certainly a much larger collection of dwellings than the place from which they had come. The city seemed vast as it sprawled over the haphazard undulations of half a dozen ridges, but though it was very large Noell was immediately struck by the idea that it seemed dramatically underpopulated. There were very few people – elemi or servants – to be seen in the streets. The buildings were made of stone rather than mud and clay, but they seemed very crude by comparison with the houses of Gaul.
The travellers did not go far through the city streets before they surrendered their horses to be stabled, and were taken into a narrow doorway into what seemed quite a small dwelling. It was not until they were inside, and had been taken some way along lamplit corridors, that Noell realised that this city, like the one from which they had come, was as much inside the crags as outside, and that the builders of the city, over the millennia, had taken full advantage of the many natural lacunae in the bedrock, as well as patiently quarrying new caves with their crude tools.
The stone corridors were very cold after the heat of the afternoon sun, and they were taken to a room with no furniture but mats upon the floor, where there were pitchers of water and platters of fruit and bread. Kantibh told them that he would send for coats, to keep them warm. He told them to eat what they would, and rest after their journey, because they would not be going to their beds for many hours. What they had come to see, he told them, they would see when the sun had set.
Noell ate sparingly, being more tired than hungry, and finding the gloom of the stony chamber not at all to his liking. The waiting was not easy, and
their rest was not as comfortable as they might have hoped. Even when Kantibh brought them coats made from some kind of spun cotton cloth they still felt the cold, which made them shiver. They were glad indeed when the Persian told them that it was time to go, and led them away into the corridors, where they turned to left and right so many times that Noell completely lost his sense of direction.
In the end, they came out into the open again, into a place where the starlit sky was above them, albeit ringed by very high walls. They were in a kind of amphitheatre, with a series of circular steps surrounding an open space where four fires were burning, in the middle of which was a stone dais. There were candles on the dais, but none in the outer parts of the theatre, so that it was difficult to see the crowd which gathered there, seated in silence. Even so, Noell caught his breath in astonishment, for he had never seen such a crowd before.
He had grown used by now to the aged appearance of the vampires of Africa, and to the meanness of the flesh upon their bones. He had seen men who had put him in mind of walking skeletons, their cheeks drawn tight about their skull, and their hair reduced to fragile wisps of white. But he had seen such creatures one or two at a time, never in thousands, and never so strange as this. The lustrous, polished skin which was the mark of the vampire reflected light well, and the firelight was thrown back from a thousand faces, in such a way that the eyes were twin pools of shadow in every visage. This made the heads look like skulls indeed, and the elemi sat so still that it would have been easy to think of them as carved statues.
The faces all turned towards the newcomers as they emerged from the tunnel, so that the shadowed eyes might examine these strangers from another world. Noell understood this curiosity, but could not escape the feeling that those myriad eyes were looking at him with avid malevolence, transfixed by his pale and alien features, his frail and luscious flesh. He stopped, and Kantibh had to take his arm and pull at him insistently, drawing him away to the left. Noell allowed himself to be drawn, but he did not look where he was being taken; his eyes still scanned the serried ranks of the elders of Adamawara, who seemed more like a company of the living dead than a congregation of immortals. It was as if this was a court of corpses: a thousand maskless Egungun, lifted from their coffins to preside over a trial of living men.
Why he thought, is this Hell after all? Is this a conventicle of sad souls brought to utter misery by the wiles of Satan?
But the thought made him want to laugh, for it seemed in some idiotic way to be comical, and not terrifying at all. And he nearly did laugh, as Kantibh turned him and pushed him down, so that he sat upon a cold stone ledge, facing a gap between two of the fierce-burning fires.
Then, though it did not proceed according to the scheme laid down by Guazzo, the vampire sabbat began.
EIGHT
Some of the elemi near to the central stage, who held drums between their clenched knees, began to beat them with their hands. The sound was not loud, but the raps were sharp and clear in the still night air. There was a basic rhythm of three beats, carefully spaced and then repeated. Even before the voices joined in, Noell knew where he had heard it before, endlessly intoned by Ghendwa during the long nights of their epic journey.
A-a-a-a … da-a-a-a … ma!
A-a-a-a … da-a-a-a … ma!
A-a-a-a … da-a-a-a … ma!
Here, the meaningless phrase was carried by a thousand voices, each one no louder than a stage whisper, so that in sum the chant was like a restless seething tide, not loud but somehow filling the air. It possessed the attention of the listeners as completely as it absorbed the voices of the chanters.
A-a-a-a … da-a-a-a … ma!
A-a-a-a … da-a-a-a … ma!
Noell looked about him curiously. The elemi seated immediately behind him were now quite oblivious to his presence. Their eyes, like the eyes of all the others, were staring up into the sky, open but seemingly unfocused.
A-a-a-a … da-a-a-a … ma!
A-a-a-a … da-a-a-a … ma!
Kantibh was not chanting. Here, he was as much an outsider as those he had received into his house. Ngadze was silent too, and his face was masked with fear. Despite the fact that Kantibh did not join in the chant, it seemed to Noell that the Persian was willing prey to its hypnotic rhythm, and Ngadze too. While he watched Kantibh’s face he thought that he could see all thought drain away, displaced by the reverberations of the rhythm; the Persian and the Ibau man were alike entranced, sucked into a magical vortex of some kind, as though transported into a dream. Noell had little difficulty in reacting against such absorption; he would not willingly surrender his thoughts to the dominion of Shigidi.
Noell scanned the firelit faces, which seemed identical and interchangeable, though he supposed these men had been born into dozens of different tribes. Vampirism had transformed them all into the same thing. Adamawara belonged to all the tribes, and all the tribes belonged to Adamawara, for this was a place outside the common order of things.
A-a-a-a … da-a-a-a … ma!
A-a-a-a … da-a-a-a … ma!
This is no Sabbat, thought Noell, as the pulse-beat went through and through him. It is not an act of worship, holy or unholy. What we have been brought here to witness is a transformation, a rite of passage. This is how the Africans see vampirism: it is a pathway to another kind of adulthood, to the membership of a tribe beyond all tribes.
While the chant continued, several individuals came into the space marked out by the four fires. Noell saw them only as men in costume but he knew that the elemi did not see them thus. They came from shadows, as though materialising out of nothing, and they wore the raiment of gods and demons. He was not surprised to see Egungun: a whole troop of the risen dead, like that which had come to find them in the Tartarean forest. But there were others dressed in more striking masks, their bodies painted in garish colours. By likening their appearance to statues, carvings and symbols which he had seen in those Ibau and Edau villages which acknowledged the Uruba gods, he recognised these deities. He knew Shango by the streaks like lightning which ran across the shiny black flesh, and by the round stones which he held. He knew Elegba by the red and purple patterns on his skin, and by the phallic club which he wielded. By similar tokens he knew Obatala, Ogun and Ifa, and the goddesses Orisha Oko and Ododua. Nor was there any mistaking Olori-merin, the four-handed one, whose limbs were the directions of the compass, and whose body was entwined with snakes.
Four others came with them, naked and painted but not masked: men with bowed heads and loose-hung limbs. These, Noell guessed, were the wise ones sent by their tribes to be candidates for acceptance into the society of vampires – priests and magicians, shorn now of their regalia and made small of importance, before they might eat the heart of Olorun and take his breath of life.
Poor Msuri! lamented Noell. He should be here, to take his place in this company, before this altar which is no altar at all.
Noell watched the gods as they began a slow dance to the rhythm of the drums. How much it meant to the assembled elemi he could not guess, but to him, who could barely recognise which gods they were, it was difficult to fathom. He watched Shango enact the storm which was his appearance in the world, and hurl thunderbolts to the ground. He watched Elegba and Orisha Oko mime some mysterious communion which had to do with fecundity and replenishment, which also involved Obatala and Ododua his wife. He watched the dancing figures move as though to allow the passage of one invisible among them, and he guessed that Olorun too was there, unseen. The arena was too crowded, though, with the Egungun and the gods, and too poorly lit by the great fires whose play of brightness and shadow was full of confusion. The moving figures became blurred in Noell’s sight as he tried to map the intricacies of their transactions.
A-a-a-a … da-a-a-a … ma!
A-a-a-a … da-a-a-a … ma!
There were other drums beating now, producing complex rhythms to regulate the dancing of the gods, but the underlying rhythm remained, and the hypnotic
chanting to which it gave birth.
Bowls were brought by the Egungun and set upon the dais, and the gods took turns in picking powders from pouches contained within their costumes, sprinkling them in the bowls from above, slowly enough that all could see what was being done yet with no delay. Against the background of the chant other voices were raised now, each one declaiming according to a kind of rhythm, but not in unison, so that the songs were muddled and mingled, in an order so intricate that it seemed always to be teetering on the brink of cacophony. The candidates joined in for a little while, crying to the sky as though possessed by some emotion that Noell could not name.
The would-be elemi became quiet again when a god, who might have been Osanhin or Aroni, gave them medicine to take into their mouths. Noell watched their jaws move steadily from side to side in an oddly rhythmic chewing motion which he had sometimes seen Ghendwa use. The men – there were four – now seemed slightly unsteady on their feet, and their eyes were glazed. It was not only the chant which was possessing them; Noell judged that they were drugged. Everything seemed to be happening more slowly now. The gods … the masked men, Noell reminded himself … seemed tortuously deliberate in their motions as they concluded their work in preparing the bowls. What elaborate concoction had been made therein? wondered Noell.
We are supposed to be deeply impressed by this, he thought. We are to marvel at the wonder of it, and become aware of our own smallness of mind. But I know what a futile masque this is, and what a smokescreen of mystification surrounds a tiny kernel of authentic power. We are watching the gods, visible and invisible, mixing an awesome elixir of life. No doubt the vampires of Gaul have a rite of their own which is no less elaborate and no less strange, yet the difference must be in the costumes and the empty, powerless words. What is essential here is but a little fraction of the whole, so little that I think it might seem absurd without such extravagant efforts to elaborate it.
Empire of Fear Page 33
