She nodded and rose from her seat. Sammael offered her his empty goblet, and she bit her wrist, turning her back to us as she filled the cup with blood. Sammael took the cup from her and swallowed its contents in one draught. He pulled a disagreeable face, as if he’d taken a swig of noxious medicine. Tamaris looked surprised, and rather offended.
‘Rinse the cup and give Lord Sammael another measure of wine,’ I said. She left the room.
‘You have upset her,’ I said. ‘She is a dear and loyal dependant of mine, and I object to her being insulted. Please thank her when she returns.’
‘My manners are not all they were,’ Sammael admitted.
For a while, we conversed, carefully, around sensitive subjects. As I had predicted, refreshment invigorated Sammael; the colour of his skin improved greatly, and he appeared to become more confident. He asked questions about our art, and confessed that, of all the things he had denied himself, he had missed visiting the theatre most. We did not talk about what he was doing in my house, or why had had decided to come. I suspected his decision to leave the tower had been made as impulsively, if not more so, as mine had been to visit him; perhaps he was wondering now whether he had done the right thing. I tried to imagine how I would feel, in his position. There was so much I didn’t know about him; our history, the past, had been diluted intentionally. The facts were locked up somewhere; it was felt we no longer needed them, that their starkness might harm the delicate balance of our relationship with this world.
‘Tell me again about this soulscaper,’ Sammael said, at last. I had been waiting for him to broach the subject himself.
‘She is in the care of a dependant of ours.’ I replied. ‘He is bringing her to Sacramante. I must admit I have not observed her recently, but she is in good hands.’
‘You must decide quickly what you are going to do with her, then,’ Sammael said.
I told him, in detail, my plan to send Rayojini into the soulscape of the eloim, and root out any abnormalities.
‘Before you embark upon this,’ Sammael said, ‘both you and Rayojini must be clear about that which is essential, and that which is abnormal. It could be a dangerous endeavour; very dangerous. A miscalculation, and you could cause more damage than healing.’
‘I am aware of that.’
‘But there is much you are unaware of. Gimel, I don’t mean to criticise your bold strategies, but...’ He paused. ‘I do wonder whether this sickness of eloimkind is not the result of very old dilemmas; a bleak harvest, which I regretfully anticipated a long time ago.’ He sighed. ‘However, letting the soulscaper look around shouldn’t hurt. You must let me supervise.’
It was more than I could have wished for. Still, I couldn’t help wondering how Metatron was going to react to this new component in our design. ‘It would be ideal if you could at least brief Rayojini in some way,’ I said.
‘How much are you going to tell her?’ he asked.
I had not really considered that. ‘She will have to be told enough for her to be able to accomplish her task, of course.’
‘What if she doesn’t want to help you?’
‘She will! I have been with her in spirit for years!’
Sammael shook his head. ‘Gimel, I find myself querying how much you know of the human mind.’
‘I am very fond of Rayojini.’
‘And you are trusting your fondness will be enough to sway her decisions?’ He smiled. ‘Perhaps it will.’ He turned his attention to Sandalphon. ‘I think you should go to your Parzupheim soon,’ he said. ‘Tell them I will speak with them shortly.’
It was a cue, which Sandalphon was tactful enough to recognise. He stood up. ‘Should I return later?’
Sammael nodded. ‘I suppose you had better relay any messages they might want to give me.’ He grinned at me. ‘This will throw them into a fluster. If I felt stronger, I’d go to the Castile myself. It is a shame I cannot watch their expressions as this news is delivered!’
Sandalphon smiled tentatively. ‘I shall memorise every face and, when I return, tell you in detail of their condition.’
‘I find it hard to see you as you really are,’ I said, once Sandalphon had gone.
‘That is because you cannot see me as I really am,’ Sammael replied.
‘No, you misunderstand me. I meant that I know who you are and yet, sitting here in my little salon, you are just another eloim.’
‘I am devastated. Have the years been that unkind to me?’
‘Not at all... Why did you come here with me?’
He looked around the room. ‘It was time. No, that sounds terribly prophetic and gloomy! I don’t know why I came. Suddenly, I just wanted to.’ He stood up and went to look at my shelves of books.
‘Oh, your father still writes!’ he said, picking up one of Metatron’s works and skimming through the pages. ‘Weighty stuff! And I expect it is rather pompous.’
‘No, my father has a light hand.’ I joined him by the books. He pushed the volume he’d been looking at into my hands, and picked another.
‘Was my father with you... in the beginning?’ I asked. It seemed a ridiculous question. I wondered how much Sammael knew about us. Would he be amused by the fact I was ignorant of my father’s origin, or even how old he was?
‘Metatron, this Metatron, is a babe compared to me,’ he replied. ‘He was not with me “in the beginning”, no. I should imagine that most of my old companions are gone now.’
‘What do you mean, gone?’ Something in his voice alarmed me.
He glanced at me speculatively. ‘Where do you think?’
‘I don’t know. Elderly eloim retire to their rooms in the strongholds. As they age, they become more ascetic.... Eventually, of course, they must...’ I found I couldn’t say the words. Death was not a concept I ever considered in detail. If it was an eventuality for me, it was so far distant as to be irrelevant. Sammael was looking at me in a way I could not fully interpret, but it was very guarded.
‘Gimel...’ He began, and then shook his head. ‘No, I cannot believe that!’
‘Believe what?’
He placed his book back on the shelf and straightened the spines of all the other volumes. ‘You are not immortal, you know. Have you never thought about that? Have you never wondered what happens to the most ancient of eloim?’
‘No... yes... Well, they must just fade.... As I said, they have special quarters in their family strongholds. The Parzupheim are very old.’
‘Children!’ Sammael declared. ‘Poor Gimel, poor, poor Gimel. Don’t you realise, lovely lady, that your flesh is mortal? And yet, the spirit, which drives that flesh, is not. You cannot die, but neither can you live forever. Which leaves only one alternative; you transform.... but into what?’ He sighed and ran one long finger along the spines of the books. ‘We are trapped on this world, Gimel. From this perspective, this moment of Now, we are trapped here forever. We cannot die, and yet, we do.’
I did not fully understand him, neither did I really want to. The introduction of this subject had frightened me. ‘You have not died!’ I said. ‘And you have been here since the beginning.’
‘I am not like the rest of you,’ he replied.
‘Then what...’
He touched my face gently. ‘Not now,’ he said. I felt he understood completely how much the subject of death perturbed me. ‘These moments, here in this house, your lovely house, should not be sullied by thoughts of death; they are a time for life.’ I closed my eyes to concentrate upon the spidery path his fingers traced across my skin. ‘I am reborn,’ he said. ‘Let me experience things anew.’
With that, he enfolded me in his arms.
He had told me that he had never touched his human companions in love. He had been alone, in that respect, for centuries. If I expected fire from him, I was disappointed. He made love to me in the manner of someone who had not practised an old skill for so long they needed proof that they were still adept. It was almost a scholarly act of love. And yet, I had a
feeling that this, like the sup, was not something Sammael took great pleasure in. He liked to be held, he liked to be stroked, but the release was incidental. As I kissed him, I was thinking of the great age of those lips, and who they might have kissed in the past. These lips had spoken words into the primal chaos of the world; they had sculpted sound into matter, darkness into light. I tried to imagine him as a young spirit, but could not.
He stood away from me and stripped off his clothes. He put my hand over the scar above his heart. ‘See, it is healed.’
I touched it with my mouth, and my lips tingled with cold fire. In this place had Mikha’il pressed his teeth, in this place... I was living the past, touching legends through time. I could see his heart beating; that tireless, ageless heart. I considered inviting him to my most private room, but Sammael gave no cue for words. He lay down upon my fleecy rugs, just staring up at me, his hair a scarlet flag across the floor. I undressed for him slowly, a true performance, and unbound my hair above him so that it cascaded down onto his flesh; he pressed it against his face, inhaling deeply. He wanted to hold me fiercely, our skins aligned, but it was me who initiated the actual coupling. He submitted passively, with a willing hardness, but it was I who had the passion, the need, the urgency.
Afterwards, lying quietly on the rugs, Sammael laid his head on my breast and I wrapped my arms around him. In some way, I felt I’d failed him.
‘It must be strange,’ I said carefully, ‘to hold another, to love another, after so long an abstinence...’
He sighed. ‘Like supping, it was not something I had a great appetite for,’ he said. ‘For me, the coupling of flesh is not enough. It is but a parody.’
I felt as if he’d slapped me. I’d tried to please him, to give him pleasure and closeness, to give him love. ‘You are hard to satisfy,’ I said, unable to keep a certain tartness from my voice.
He laid his hand over one of my breasts. ‘No, don’t be angry. I am not criticising you. It is just that, as I said before, I am not quite like you. It is not your fault.’
‘Perhaps I should have left the house!’ I continued, still hurt. ‘Perhaps you should have had Sandalphon in my place!’
He laughed. ‘I love to hear such human words coming from your lips, dear Gimel! No, that is not what I meant, and you know it.’
‘What did you mean then?’
‘This.’
Where he lay, along my body, the flesh became hot. Then, a numbness. All the organs in my belly contracted and rippled. I jerked. ‘Stop!’ I cried. Sammael’s hand, still cupping my breast, squeezed me gently.
‘Do you know what I am doing?’ he asked me.
I nodded. ‘I think so, yes. It feels... please, stop.’
‘Oh Gimel,’ he said. ‘Don’t be so faint-hearted. Let me make love to you now, in the only way I truly understand. Experience the ghost of your heritage.’
I could feel him sinking into me, and yet knew he was holding himself back. He would not let go until I gave my assent. Where our flesh had already melded, he set up a gentle rhythm; particles grazed particles, and where they met, light exploded outwards into time. My skin, where he touched me along the flank, tingled in the same way as loins tingle in the heat of sexual arousal.
‘May we?’ Sammael asked. ‘I will protect you.’
A memory of Avirzah’e flashed through my mind. I remembered the timeless moments in the Castile when he, Beth and I had momentarily, and superficially, fused. Since then, had Beth and Avirzah’e taken that fusion to its limit? How could I know? I should have been with them, yes, part of them. I was meant to be part of them, but now I was here, in my salon, with the Lord of Light. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We may.’
There was no caution for my virgin flesh. He overwhelmed me instantly; a hunger too long contained. My own body, as if remembering some primal instinct, realigned itself at his direction. We were one creature; a sphere of light, a universe of popping sparks, colliding. Each collision engendered its own minute orgasm. The force of his love, the great eternal reality of love, swamped me to oblivion. We rose up, a spinning cluster of stars. We spiralled; a mist of mingling light. No flesh, no substance to speak of, but indescribable sensations that belonged, or existed, beyond the familiar world of space and time. For an instant, conjoined, we travelled home, truly home. I imagined there were a thousand, thousand spirits spinning around us, melding, passing through each other, exchanging essence.
In those infinite moments, at one with the Prince of Light, I understood him completely. For someone who had experienced this, the conjunction of flesh alone could never be enough.
To be fair to Sammael, what he showed to me was not entirely for selfish motives. He explained that, for me to fully understand my position and the importance of decisions I might have to make, it was essential to be aware of exactly what I was.
‘Now you have experienced the conjunction, you are more suited to your responsibilities,’ he said. ‘Now, you have a fuller knowledge on which to base your decision concerning which direction eloim should take.’
We had dressed ourselves and now sat drinking the remainder of the mulled wine, which had gone cold. I laughed. ‘Sammael, that isn’t my decision alone. It is one that all eloim should participate in. I am only the daughter of Metatron.’
He reached out, grabbed hold of my arm and pulled me from my chair, drawing me down beside him on the couch. ‘And the Metatronims have the energy and motivation to act in this time of crisis, as do certain members of the Tartaruchi! Most eloim seem content to debate the problem until they have all killed themselves! No, Gimel, you are wrong. The decision is yours. You have to take responsibility.’
‘I can’t!’
‘Whyever not? I once had to. Someone always has to. You were brave enough to come to my tower and unleash the presence of the past. You cannot go back.’
I had not considered things in that light. It seemed Sammael had not only juggled the atoms of my being, but also my perception of the world. I knew I felt very different from how I’d felt before we had conjoined, but I could not say in precisely what way. Perhaps I had forgotten something; this new me was unable to process certain information. However, his words made sense to me. Despite tradition, which eloimkind claimed sustained them as much as human blood, I wanted to act independently and boldly. Were these all my own thoughts? I wondered how I would have felt if I had conjoined with Avirzah’e. We might have done something terribly rash. Sammael kissed me tenderly on the brow. ‘Tell me, now you have this power, now I have made you a Queen of Eloim, what will you do?’
‘I am not a queen, but I realise that it is me who will have to make the decisions. I think... I think now that Avirzah’e was right, in some respects, but then I suppose I have always thought that.’ I screwed up my face to consider, and laced my fingers with Sammael’s. ‘I think you should show us how to become ourselves and, if it is possible, how to sustain each other. If we can, we should release humanity from the tithe of blood, as you called it.’
‘Mmm. You do realise that should eloim revert to mutual sustenance, their forms will also revert. Their substance will become more... flexible. They would find it harder to pass for human.’
‘Then, it is just something else we will have to learn to deal with. We should be able to protect ourselves from intolerant humanity, shouldn’t we? There will have to be a time of adjustment, of course, and some people are going to fear us and perhaps be hostile... Couldn’t you help us?’
Sammael did not answer my question. ‘And how will you deal with the eloim who refuse to do as you suggest?’
‘Sammael, stop it! Support me! I am trying to look for answers in the dark! This is all conjecture. I know how difficult it will be to initiate change; for both humanity and eloimkind! There will be a thousand problems I haven’t thought of yet! I am just sitting here, in your arms, in my salon, thinking aloud of ways to create the best possible future. I know how difficult it will be to achieve just a fragment of that potential!’
/>
Sammael squeezed me gently. ‘Gimel, I am supporting you. Please don’t think otherwise. I just wanted to make sure you were aware of how arduous the days ahead will be, whatever decision you make.’
‘But will you be with me?’
He paused, and rested his chin on the top of my head. ‘I am - for now. But it is impossible for me to conjecture further than the day.’
Ultimately, he expected I would have to be independent.
Soon, I would have to approach Avirzah’e and Beth. Just the thought of that made my heart beat faster. What would I say? I could adopt any attitude; contrition, complicity, desire. Avirzah’e would have to be honest with me about whatever his throng had been involved in, and I would have to try and convince him that adjustments would have to be made. Surely, when he heard what I had to say, he could only agree with me. Perhaps I should take Sammael with me to speak with them. I was on the point of going to my desk to inscribe a brief note for Ramiz to deliver to Avirzah’e, imagining I would be able to confer with he and Beth that night, when Tamaris knocked sharply on the salon door. She is such a perceptive soul; normally, she knocks once and walks right in. ‘Yes?’ I said. ‘Come in.’
‘Your father!’ Tamaris exclaimed, wide-eyed in the doorway.
‘Here?’ I put down my pen, preparing to steel myself for unpleasantness.
Tamaris shook her head. ‘No. He has sent word. He requests that you hurry to the family stronghold. He says it is urgent, very urgent!’
I had not expected Metatron to conclude his explorations in Khalt with the Harkasites and return to Sacramante so soon, and was worried that he’d somehow found out what I’d done. Had Sandalphon contacted him by concentrated mindchime last evening? It was possible, but somehow seemed unlikely.
Sammael insisted on accompanying me to the Metatronim stronghold, although I was reluctant to spring him on Metatron unannounced; I had anticipated a careful and protracted speech, on my behalf, by way of introduction. How Metatron was going to react to my actions, I could not guess. Half of me hoped he would admire my courage, but the other half was well aware how much he disliked his authority being over-ridden. It could go two ways; I wished I might face it out alone.
Burying the Shadow Page 36
