'O Foreigner,' she said, 'you know nothing of the Masters of Khanaphes, and yet here you are. You have been led here – by what, I wonder?'
'I have heard of these Masters, but nobody will tell me anything about them,' Che replied, and some of her frustration must have leaked out, because Mother chuckled indulgently.
'Then listen, O Foreign child,' she said. 'Once, many, many generations ago, the Masters walked the streets of Khanaphes, and exercised their power over the earth as naturally as we ourselves would breathe and eat. They were lordly and beautiful, and they knew no death, nor did age afflict them, or disease or injury. Their thought was law, and the city of Khanaphes knew a greatness that today is only a shadow.'
'Only a shadow of a shadow,' murmured the halfbreed man, and then the three Khanaphir in chorus. Che felt Trallo shift nervously.
'But that was our Golden Age, and all things fade. So it came about that the Masters were seen no more on the streets of Khanaphes, and the decline of our people began. Oh, the Ministers will claim that they hear the voices of the Masters, that the Masters reside still within their sealed palaces, ready to save the city should they be called upon, but we know that the true glory of our city is long passed, and it is many hundreds of years since this soil knew the tread of the Masters.' Her brilliant eyes were fixed on Che and she licked her lips thoughtfully.
'So what is it that you do here?' Che asked her. I am almost there. Just a handful of words and surely I will understand.
'Though the Masters are gone, they have left their legacy. There are those that possess some spark, some trace of their old blood,' Mother said slowly. 'They find the world of today hostile and confusing, perhaps? They are tormented by dreams and visions? They long for something more…?' Her lips split in a smile. 'I thought as much. O Foreigner, I see in you something of their touch, their mark. All who are here with me are your kin. We carry within us the bloodline of the Masters, and were the Ministers just, we would be elevated and praised for it, instead of hunted like criminals.'
Che glanced at the others, and she noticed now that even the Khanaphir had a strange cast to their features, uneven, slightly disfigured, perhaps some distant trace of mingled bloods. A cynical part of her said, It probably does not take too much belief to turn a wart into the blood of the Masters. Another voice was saying, Are they talking about Aptitude? Is it the lack of it they discern in me? Is all this a memory going back to when this city was Inapt, before their revolution? And were the Masters their seers, who were cast out after they discovered their new artifice?
'But…' Mother continued, and let the word hang for a moment in the stuffy air, 'there is a way for those of us that still bear the ancient gift to touch those far-off days. There is a substance that can yet wake memories of the golden days of Khanaphes.'
'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.