Scenting Hallowed Blood (2 page)

The boy spoke, his voice clear
yet strangely sibilant. ‘Who calls the serpent mother, Seference,
She Who Gives Life to the Dead?’

One of the oldest women stepped
forward. She held a long, carved staff, which seemed to denote
authority. ‘It is I, Meggie Penhaligon, and my sisters. We call
upon thee, Serpent Mother for the wisdom of thy quick tongue.’

The boy’s eyelids flickered.
‘She is the serpent goddess, and She is with us. I am here and
everywhere. The moon lights a cruel path across the sea and She
walks it. I am walking the path of light to the shore, along the
old highway, the serpent path to the land.’

‘What is thy prophecy, Mother?’
Meggie Penhaligon knew there was something to learn. She had felt
it in her bones, and the younger women had felt it in their blood
and bellies; a flexing, a quickening.

‘He has awoken in the north.’
The boy’s voice sounded hollow, as if echoing through empty
corridors of stone.

Meggie leaned forward.
‘He?’

‘The Hanged One...’ The boy
sighed, his whole body shuddering, but a smile came to his lips.
‘Yes. He is with us once again, but he covers his face. There are
guardians around him, for many will seek him. They covet his
power.’

Meggie Penhaligon felt her body
stiffen. This was what she and her sisters had been waiting for.
Now that the words spilled from the lips of their oracle, it seemed
almost too fabulous to be believed. Myths made flesh.
He
walks...

‘Give me his name,’ Meggie
murmured.

The boy answered without
pausing. ‘Shemyaza, who was in Eden. Shemyaza, who lay with mortal
women and cursed his race. Shemyaza, father of giants and monsters,
who was condemned to hang for eternity in the constellation of
Orion. Shemyaza, giver of forbidden knowledge to humanity.
Shemyaza, whose name is also Azazel, remembered as the scapegoat.
He was punished, and his soul was sundered.’

The crashing of the waves
became momentarily louder, amplified by the tunnel’s length.
Meggie’s soft voice was barely audible because of it. ‘How has he
returned?’

The boy’s eyes fluttered in
their sockets; only a sliver of white was revealed. ‘He was born
into a body whose hands were death. With these hands, he craved to
open the star-gate that leads to the source of all. He sought to
paint the gate with blood that it might open to him, but he was
ignorant of the truth...’

Meggie nodded. This was as
she’d thought. Shemyaza would not come back to the world clad in
light and visible to all. ‘Is he still ignorant of his
origins?’

The boy’s face creased into a
frown, as if he struggled to discover the information, then his
brow cleared. ‘He is aware but sleeping. I have a name: Daniel. The
seer and vizier of old Babylon. Daniel lives in this time, and with
the hybrid twins, who are Grigori, angel-born, brought Shemyaza to
consciousness. But Shemyaza will not be the scapegoat again. He
hides his face beneath his wings and they are black with fear and
doubt. Now the world is full of him, and his potential is for great
change or great destruction. Always there will be pain associated
with his works, for even the most beneficial of changes will break
hearts and nations.’

Meggie’s throat was dry. She
could barely speak. ‘Where is he?’

‘In hiding. There are guardians
around him.’

‘Can you give me names?’

The boy was silent for a
moment, then murmured. ‘Daniel, the seer. Lil... Lilian? Emilia...
She is human but has tasted Grigori essence. Her life is extended.
And there is a void, a youth whose soul is bound. I cannot see his
name.’

‘How can we find Shemyaza? How
can we bring him to us?’

The boy’s face twisted into a
mask of rage. ‘You ask me this? No! The gate is cracked, but still
it holds. He creeps between it. He is the bringer of the new age
through death and sacrifice. Around his head is a halo of dried
tongues of fire!’

Meggie sensed the presence of
Seference was disintegrating. She was aware it was her own fear,
and that of her sisters, that prevented the information being
delivered. Should she let the essence of the goddess go, or try to
retain it? Did she really want the physical presence of Shemyaza
near her? For centuries, her ancestors had worked with the
idea
of the Fallen Ones. They had invoked the influence of
the lesser entities; Penemue, Kashday, Gadreel. As the wheel of
time turned inexorably around them, they had sensed that, one day,
the Fallen Ones would become a living reality and wake the serpent
power that slept beneath the land. But this soon? Meggie
acknowledged that she had hoped, in her secret heart, she would
have left this world by the time this great responsibility fell
upon them. Soon, she and her sisters would look into the
scrying-pool, and attempt to divine more details concerning
Shemyaza’s whereabouts and companions. For now, Meggie had heard
enough.

She raised her arms to thank
Seference for her words, as a preliminary to bringing the boy out
of trance, but the oracle suddenly lunged forward in the chair, his
slender fingers gripping the long, stone arms. When he spoke, it
was not in the hollow, distant voice of the goddess, but in a broad
Cornish accent. His normal speaking voice was southern, but
cultured, for he was the son of gentry. ‘He will find you anyway.
Did you think otherwise? He is drawn by the serpent, the voice of
the thunder, the slumbering one. He will come, for he has no
choice. Feel the serpent power flexing in its great sleep, Mother.
It will not be long before it wakes! Then out of your grip it will
slither, to empower the great alignment and all the serpent paths
within the land, and every king and giant who sleeps beneath the
earth will rise to its scent!’ Then, slowly, the oracle leaned back
into the chair, his eyes fixed on the tunnel ahead of him. A light
seemed to go out of his body. Presently, he began to shiver.

Meggie Penhaligon gestured at
one of the teenage girls. ‘Jessie.’

The girl, Jessie, stepped
forward and held out her hands to the boy in the stone chair.
Wincing, he lowered himself to the floor, and allowed her to lead
him out of the circle of candles. Jessie wrapped him in a coat of
feathers, while the women donned enveloping woollen cloaks.

As they gathered up their
ritual paraphernalia, Jessie asked Meggie a question, one that was
on the minds of all present. ‘Who spoke through Delmar at the end
there, Megs? It was a woman, wasn’t it?’

Meggie nodded. ‘I believe we
heard the voice of another like us who, in her lifetime kept the
vigil for the Shining One. She gave us advice, or a warning.’
Meggie fixed one of the other women, a voluptuous, fair-haired
creature, with a dark, steady eye. ‘Wouldn’t you agree,
Tamara?’

The woman shrugged as she
carefully placed a brass incense burner into a carrier bag. ‘I
suppose so.’

Meggie sensed a veil of
smugness emanating from Tamara Trewlynn, which screened her true
thoughts. The younger woman clearly had her own ideas about what
they’d heard, and Meggie had no doubt that eventually Tamara would
deign to reveal it to the others, probably at a moment when it
could subtly undermine Meggie’s authority. For over a year, Tamara
had been challenging Meggie’s words and actions, but now was not
the time to deal with her tendency to rebellion. Meggie knew Tamara
had a frustrated desire for power within the group, but Meggie was
not too concerned about it. She did not expect, or want, her
sisters to be passive slaves to her decrees. The moment she could
not cope with outspoken Pelleth was the moment when someone like
Tamara deserved to replace her.

The crash of the storm could be
heard plainly now, and Meggie did not relish the thought of
crossing the wind-harried beach, where the spiked fingers of the
elements would stab at her old bones. Neither could she imagine the
tortuous climb back up the cliff would be an easy task. Still, it
was done. The omens had been heeded, and the ritual completed.
Seference had spoken, and confirmed their hopes and fears. Lord
Shemyaza, fallen angel, disgraced prince, was made flesh in the
world.

The women extinguished the last
of the candles and, by the light of hurricane lamps, made their way
down the tunnel to the beach. Here, the weather was as bad as
Meggie had feared. The waves crashed angrily against the rocks,
throwing stinging spray across the narrow walkway of sand. They
were like angry monsters, those waves, and Meggie knew that if they
took a shine to the thought, they would thresh their way further
onto the shore and devour the group of women. She made a few
conciliatory gestures at the pounding sea, hoping the storm-beasts
were too intoxicated by the madness of their own power to notice
the fragile creatures of flesh feeling their way along the cliff to
the place where the upward path began.

Lissie and Tamara, the two
snake-crowned women, walked either side of the oracle, leading the
way. The boy seemed not to notice the wind or the rain, his back
erect, his head raised. Meggie, walking behind them, the hand of
the girl-child clasped firmly in her own, noticed how tall the boy
was getting. Soon, the time might come when he would be given to
the elements, too much of a man to fulfil his function, as
androgynous channel for the Shining Ones and their minions. She had
seen many beautiful boys hold the office of oracle in her time.
Already, a boy child of five years was being groomed to take over
the role when the moment came. A boy, who had grown up with the
thought that his life would be short, extinguished during his late
teens or early twenties. One she had known had made it to
twenty-five, but he had been an exception. All children, Meggie
knew, were primarily female, as they had been at the moment of
conception. In the womb, mysterious processes decided whether a
child would be male or female, but even so, they were predominantly
female in their hearts during their growing years. All children
were psychic, hovering between the world of reality and that of the
unseen. They were innocent, joyous, full of potential. Then the
curse of puberty would begin to curl its cold, steel fingers around
their bodies, and the veil between the worlds would thicken in
their sight. Women, privileged because of their moon cycles, could
sometimes keep on the way of the wyrd, but boys grew up to be men,
changed into those creatures. If their blood coursed to the tides,
it was often only to manifest as madness. Men had no place in the
ranks of the Pelleth, the wielders of the secret ways. Men were
providers, lovers and fathers, but magic was weak in their angry
hearts. Neither must they ever discover the mysteries, which was
why all the oracles were slain once their function was over. They
could not be trusted, as men, with the knowledge they’d acquired
during their office.

As the women slowly climbed the
path from the private beach, the storm lashed them cruelly. Meggie
could feel its mad passion. It was like an exuberant animal and its
rough attentions were without malice. It was simply unaware of its
own strength, playing mischievously with those who knew its heart.
The child, Agatha, suddenly pulled on Meggie’s hand. ‘Look, Gran!’
She pointed into the air. Meggie nodded.

‘Aye, love.’ No doubt the
elemental spirits were clearer to the child. With her fading eyes,
Meggie could make out the dim suggestion of impish faces, of long,
attenuated limbs. When the wind gusted, the skeletal fingers would
reach out and pinch the billowing cloaks of the women.

Agatha laughed and waved her
free hand.

‘Mind!’ Meggie chided. The
spirits were not beyond taking advantage and plucking the child
from the cliff-face.

Eventually, the top of the
cliff was within reach. As soon as Meggie stepped off the path, the
wind caught hold of her, and if it hadn’t been for Agatha, with the
help of Jessie behind her, the old woman would have been tossed
back down to the beach. It had been easier in the past to match the
elements, to give herself to their arms without fear. This body was
too feeble now, and sardonically the spirits teased her. It was the
same for her sister, Betsy, Meggie knew. One day, when life became
too onerous, she and Betsy would surrender themselves to the storm
for the last time, and let it take them to the next world. But that
time was not yet.

The lights of the Penhaligon
house were visible from the cliff-top. In fact, the garden ran
right to the edge. At one time it had been longer, but the weather
and the sea had eaten away at the land. The beach below belonged to
the Penhaligons and had done so for as long as anyone remembered,
or was recorded. The giant’s chair was a great relic, but no-one
save the Pelleth knew of its existence. When the tide was high,
water gushed into the cave, and whoever sat upon the chair was
marooned until the waves receded. Over the centuries, the action of
the sea had created a plinth for the chair. All initiates to the
Pelleth were required to spend a tide’s-time in the cave, sitting
upon the throne of the Old Ones, pondering the power of the Fathers
of Thunder.

Long ago, when the giants had
come to the island, they had hewn the chair out of the rock for
their own, mysterious rites. The content of those rituals were
mostly lost and forgotten. All that remained was the knowledge of
the serpent power that they had left below the earth, and how the
dreams of its eternal slumber could be tapped, and shaped into
forms of magic. Meggie’s people were the inheritors of this
knowledge. For many thousands of years, their ancestors had kept
the legends of the giants alive. They knew that the giants
themselves had been half-breeds of an ancient race, who were
remembered in myth as angels and demons. They also knew the
significance of all the sacred sites of the land that the giants
had constructed, and worked with the latent energy that was
enshrined in these places. In the distant past, the giants had been
served by the people of the land, revered as gods, feared as
warrior kings. The tall strangers from far across the sea had built
themselves fortress eyries in the highest places, and with some of
the women of the little people, they had bred, further diluting the
blood of their forbears. The children of these unions drew away
from their mothers’ race to share the power of their fathers.
Eventually, the giants and their children had melted into the wild
land, leaving their places of power behind them, untended. Workers
of magic, such as the Pelleth, were attracted to these sites, and
learned to work with their energies. Over the centuries, memories
had become folk-tales, and the giants had grown in both stature and
potency in the memories of the local people. Now, they were almost
feared, and seen as a force to appease.