The Wraeththu Trilogy

by Storm Constantine

  He laughed and sat up. "You are growing up to be another Cobweb," he said.

  "What? Because I shall be a dark and wondrous beauty, or because I shall be slightly mad?"

  "Oh, both, I think. Definitely!"

  We saw Peter come into the garden and start digging around in the flowerbeds. Gahrazel called to him and demanded that he bring us refreshment because it was so hot. I knew Peter disliked talking to hara or even being near them. Gahrazel enjoyed making him uncomfortable.

  "Peter could be har," Gahrazel said.

  "Could he? How?" I hoped Gahrazel was not making fun of me.

  "Like our fathers, like Cobweb, like everyone," Gahrazel replied, in a reasonable voice that was not the slightest bit mocking. "Do you think Wraeththu came from nowhere? Most of them were human once."

  "Oh, I know that!" I said scornfully. "How, though? How do they do it?"

  "It's our blood," Gahrazel explained, stroking the blue vein just visible on the inside of his arm. "It makes humans become like us. Male humans develop female parts as well. It can't work the other way. I saw it once at home."

  "But how do they change? Is it really possible?"

  Gahrazel laughed. "Give Peter a cup of your blood. Let's see!"

  I shuddered. "Ugh, no. Gahrazel, you're disgusting!"

  When Peter brought our drinks out, Gahrazel laughed because he would not look at us. I felt embarrassed. I did not want the humans to hate us.

  "There may be thunder," I said, squinting at the deceptive sky. "And great tearing gouts of lightning!" Gahrazel added enthusiastically. By lunchtime, the sky had become green and boiling.

  Looking back, I can't decide whether it was the tension of the approaching storm or some kind of presentiment that made me so jumpy. I could barely eat my lunch. My head was full of strange, high-pitched sounds that I could not hear properly. Sometimes, ghostlike zigzags of light would flit across my vision. Cobweb ate daintily as usual, but I could feel the power in him and he scared me. I kept thinking of the Ten of Swords. A black sky, blood and despair. Gahrazel chatted with our tutors, sensing nothing.

  After lunch, I went to my room and sat on the window seat. Vague growling echoed deeply in the sky from the east and the air was very still, as if holding its breath. The eerie green light outside made the garden darker, untamed and sentient. I pressed my face against the cool glass, feeling my heart flutter in my throat, the sound of blood in my ears and the dull pain that echoed it. Something is going to happen, I thought, and with that acknowledgment, another thing, shapeless and wild, released its terrifying grip on me. I opened up and let it flow into me; the power of the storm and something else, something more controlled and yet less understandable. My body shook, my throat was dry.

  Outside, a white shape flickered through the gloom, passing beneath the mantle of the evergreens, into the darkness that lay beyond, toward the lake, toward the summerhouse, out in the living air. My skin prickled. Was it someone? Was it? While my mind still seemed to hover at the window, my body launched itself across the room, out of the door, down the corridor, dark and silent, down the stairs, toward the outside. Beyond the door, in the garden, the air was still hot, yet moist and scented. I ran into the trees, not looking back, sure-footed. I could see the white shape ahead of me. It was not running or even hurrying. By the time it reached the summerhouse, I had slowed to match its pace, and I could see that it was Cal. A crooked finger of light snaked across the sky, flashing off panes of glass, off Cal's hair, off the water through the trees. The ground beneath my feet was moss. I crept toward the summerhouse and Cal opened the door. Was I so totally silent that he did not hear me? Inside, the summerhouso was strangely dark. There was a shallow stone basin in there, full of water, where orange fish lived among the lilies. It was in the center of the summer-house. A stone animal curved uncomfortably out of the water. It was a fountain, but it was not turned on. Seated on the edge of the basin, holding something in his hands, on his lap, looking more lovely, more pale, more smoky, more deadly than I had ever seen him, was Cobweb.

  I stood in the doorway and watched Cal walk toward him, his feet barely lifting, his head hanging. Cobweb looked only at him. If he knew I was there, I was of no importance and no hindrance. Cal stopped moving. Cobweb stood up. Cal looked around him, as if suddenly unsure of where he was or how he had got there. My sorcerer hostling smiled. "I am pleased you came," he said.

  Cal looked confused; he said nothing.

  "I knew you would come back one day," Cobweb continued in a conversational tone and he began to walk, around and around the basin pool. "I knew this, as I know many things. I know you, Cal, perhaps better than you know yourself. I have never liked what I have seen." He stopped and hugged closer to him the secret he held in his hands. "Sometimes when I look at you, Cal, when you sit at my table, drinking from my crystal goblets, using my silver knives and forks, with my Terzian's heart on your plate, I think to myself, 'There is blood on his hands,' and I can even see it. It is thick, dark blood. Blood from somewhere deep; lifeblood. And I can't help wondering how it came to be there. Can you tell me perhaps?"

  I looked at Cal. His face was gray, his body strained and tense as wire, shaking as if it would break. Cobweb would wind him tighter and tighter, and then ... a single touch would ... I think Cal tried to speak. He made n noise. Cobweb laughed.

  "It seems to me that you are no longer beautiful, Cal. Look into the water. See how I have brought all the foul ugliness that is within you to the surface. Look . . ." His slim, pale arm gestured toward the pool. His hair, unbound, was like creepers of ivy. I thought, I should stop this, shouldn't I? Hut how? I could no longer feel my hand where it gripped the doorpost.

  Cobweb spoke again, so low, I could barely hear it. It was a lover's voice, caressing, reassuring. "I will make you remember, Cal," he said. "Will you thank me for it, I wonder?" He paused and tapped his lips thoughtfully. "The past, the webs, the fragments, all there. Like a locked chest full of treasures."

  Cal tried to shake his head. "No," he croaked, but he could not move.

  Cobweb revealed what he held to his breast. He held it up and in the green light I could see liquid in glass, moving slowly, like thick waves on a tiny sea. There was a mark on my hostling's arm, a thin smear of dried blood. Cobweb's eyes flashed. Lightning outside; lightning within. From his lips came words that hurt my ears, that I could hear and that were without sound. He raised his arm, higher. The mark on his skin cracked as if a great force from within had burst its seal. A single drop of red peered from the whiteness and began slowly to investigate the length of his arm. I tried to run forward, but it was too slow, as if all the world had become too slow. A hundred visions of my hostling's arm flickered down to the lip of the stone basin, a sound like a soul in torment, splintering, laughter; shards of light spinning outwards. My slow hand had closed on Cal's arm and it was cold and shuddering. Cobweb saw me and in an infinite space of time, recognition stripped the triumph from his face and made it anger. He screeched. He raised his arm. I tried to pull Cal away, but it was too late, lightning arced across the room, splashing down on Cal's face, his the floor behind him.

  For a second, for an hour, there was only stillness and the phantom of a booming sound in the sky outside. Then the infant patter of raindrops. I think I said, "Cal . . ." or I thought it. Cobweb stared at him, his dark eyes immense, the whites of them showing all around.

  Cal raised his hand. He looked at it almost inquisitively. He touched the redness on the front of his shirt, rubbed it between finger and thumb, sniffed it, tasted it. He looked at Cobweb, puzzled ... for a moment. Then he looked at his hand again, it was wet and scarlet, and it started to shake. Cobweb and I were held in stasis while the terrible thing happened, while the thunder crashed in Cal's head and the lightning spurted out of his eyes. He threw back his head and the howling raised the hair on my head. His hands flew to his face. They clawed.

  I was crying; I couldn't help it. I screamed, "Cobweb! Cobweb!" help
lessly, impotently.

  My hostling did not even look at me. His voice was hoarse, his clothes, his hair

  seemed to billow around him. "Know yourself, Cal!" he snarled. "Know yourself! You are

  evil and death, the lord of lies!"

  Cal twitched as if the lightning had coursed right into him. His face was the face of

  a demon, twisted, gaping. Through the glass above, the sky crawled with fingers of

  light.

  "Go to the elements!" Cobweb screamed and Cal was blown past me, a scrap of flesh, light as air, into the rain, into the thunder, and my hostling laughed. "Not even all the hosts of Heaven can save him from himself!"

  I heard it in my head as I ran out into the rain. Whether Cobweb had actually spoken it, I could not be sure.

  Lightning had carved a great, seeping, pale gash in one of the gnarled yew trees by the lake. Perhaps at the same moment as the lightning struck, Cal's shuttered mind had opened up to him. I walked to the water and looked around me, still sobbing, tears and rain on my face. I was dazed, unsure of what had happened except that Cobweb's insane

  jealousy had been appeased. I called Cal's name, not really expecting an answer. Thunder was my only reply. I was soaked to the skin, my hair flat to my head. Cobweb would wait in the summerhouse until the rain stopped.

  I kneeled in the soft, damp earth at the water's edge. Last year's dead reeds had not yet been cleared away. Among the stronger, greener shafts they juddered beneath the firing-squad bullets of the rain. I looked across the water, toward the half-tumbled temple folly that nestled into the trees on the other side. I could see a patch of white there. Before I realized what I was doing, I had started wading out into the water, mud and reeds swallowing my legs. Splashing, panicking, I turned round, waded back and scrambled round the sucking banks toward the stones.

  He lay among the gray, licheny rocks as if he had been thrown there, his shirt torn off, his skin filthy with leaf mold and dirt, scratched and bleeding. I hurled myself toward him, wrenching my ankle, feeling the arrow of pain shoot up my leg. "Cal!" It was a scream.

  He moved feebly. He curled away from me and put his arms around his head. I was so relieved to find him alive, I tried to pull his hands away, but he pushed me back and hit my face. "Fuck off, Varr brat!" he snarled, but I am sure he did not really know who I was.

  I thought I would know madness when I saw it. The face that looked at me was not mad. There was anger, pain, despair, but also frightening sanity. "I'm sorry," I said feebly.

  He sneered at my tears. "Get out of here!" He tried to lift himself and his face creased with pain. He punched the rock. "Get out of here!"

  I put my arms around my knees and howled. Cal said nothing more. I didn't even know if he was watching me. After a while, I lifted my head and lie was sitting with his knees up, his elbows on his knees, the heels of his hands pressed into his eyes. "Cal," I said again, hopelessly.

  After a moment, his hands dropped and he looked at me. It seemed he was saying, "Go on, look at me. This is grief. I weep real tears and only I have the right to."

  "You're all dirty," I said in a small, husky voice. Cal swallowed and blinked.

  "Swift." It was just a whisper.

  "Yes?" Only the leaves dripped around us. Long, pointed, shiny leaves.

  It was still dark, but the rain was stopping. Cal's face was a pale glow. He was filthy and haggard, attenuated, perhaps the ultimate evil, and yet. ... Can this be? I wondered.

  "Swift," he said again and again I answered, "Yes . . ." "I never really forgot everything you know, at least... I don't think so." He held out one hand and looked at the water. "Little monster, little friend, come here, sit beside the lord of lies. I shall tell you such tales ..." I did not move and he turned his face toward me and smiled. "Please don't be afraid of me; that's absurd!"

  Scrambling, I tumbled over the stones down to him and came to rest against his cold side. He put his arm around me. "Cobweb—" I began, but he put his other hand over my face and I could smell the rich, dark earth smell.

  "No," he said, "don't try to apologize for him. He was only doing something he thought was right, and he may be right..." Whatever result my hostling had hoped to achieve, I did not think it was this. Perhaps Cobweb thought that Cal was dead, destroyed by magic or by his own hand.

  "Swift, you must understand, I don't think I am consciously wicked, but I have done wicked things. Some of them nobody knows about, but others, they have driven me across the land, this way and that, always wandering . . ." He sighed and closed his eyes. "What brought me back here? "What?" His fingers squeezed my arm. "I must admit, my travels have brought me to good places sometimes, where good things can happen, things that can . . . touch me somehow. I'm here for a reason. What is it? Oh, Swift, you are the special one here, I think."

  "Me?" I could not follow his ramblings. What did he mean?

  "You remind me of someone I once knew," he said. "Not in looks, certainly, for there is too much of Cobweb in you, but that crazy, totally misguided, idealistic, childish view of things, that is very familiar to me. Very." He sighed and looked at me. Part of my soul seemed to melt right out of me into the ground.

  "This is the part of the picture story where I draw my confession on your skin, I suppose."

  "You don't have to," I said quickly, for I was afraid of hearing it.

  "But there is only you!" he said. "Who else could I tell? I have to tell someone, don't I? That's the way things happen, isn't it? Now I've regained the burden of my lost memory, I have to share it with someone."

  "Terzian will be back soon," I said, glumly.

  Cal laughed. "Oh, Terzian!" He leaned his head back against the rock and I stared at his throat because it looked so long. "Terzian," Cal continued, in a thoughtful tone. "My confession would bore him. He is not here to absolve me, no, not that. I've been out of my mind and out of my body, now I'm back again. If I returned to Galhea because of him ..." He trailed off and smiled secretively.

  "I'm cold," I grumbled. Cal snickered and I wondered, if like Cobweb, he could see into my mind. His free hand cupped my neck.

  "Little Swift," he said.

  "Let's go back to the house," I suggested, afraid that he was laughing at me.

  "In a moment," Cal replied and before I could blink, he had me thoroughly in his arms and his mouth was on my own and my mind was full of red and black and rushing air. It was like dreams. I could see flames, only beyond the flames was a field of golden corn caressed by sunlight. I could smell it through the fire. I was not afraid. After a moment, it returned to merely flesh on flesh and the aftertaste of his tongue, which was like fresh apples. He put his lips against my closed eyes and held me to him.

  "I once dreamed of you," I said. "In the dream you made me speak your name."

  Cal rested his chin on the top of my head. "Did I?" he said.

  We did not speak of what had happened in the summerhouse. I did not know how badly he had been hurt, but I had realized his strength was immeasurable, perhaps more so in spirit than in body. He was cut and bruised, but his injuries appeared to be only superficial; a scraped elbow, scratched shoulders. I wanted to lick his blood, I wanted to be like him. We walked back to the house.

  I was afraid of meeting Cobweb, but Cal wasn't bothered about that at all. "So let him see me. What harm can he possibly do me now?" When he first stood up, Cal had complained of dizziness but by the time we walked in through the back door of Forever, he had completely recovered. The house was full of the smell of fruit cooking and I could hear Gahrazel's laughter coming from the drawing room. Sunlight filled the hall; the storm had passed us. I followed Cal into his room. "Just wait here while I take a bath," he said.

  After a while, I plucked up the courage to go over to his desk and look at the papers lying on it. If I thought I'd find answers, I was wrong. I could understand nothing of what he'd written. It was complete gibberish, but dark in mood and disquieting. It was inevitable that he should come back i
nto the room, a towel around his waist, rubbing his hair with another, and catch me red-handed, but he did not seem to mind.

  "If you were older," he said, "we'd have taken that bath together."

  I looked away. "But I'm not."

  "No. I forget how old you are sometimes; you look much older. I'm sorry, it must have been confusing for you." He sat down on the bed.

  "You mean what happened at the lake?" I asked, hesitantly.

  "Yes, the legendary, essentially Wraeththu sharing of breath. Don't tell your father. It was very impulsive of me, and no doubt very corrupting."

  (Don't tell your father, he said. Of course not. No. That part of Cal, the hands, the lips, the eyes, that was reserved for Terzian alone. I have not enough to offer; I am empty.) I tried to smile and watched him stand up and stretch. Magnificent, and forever beyond me. I turned to the window.

  "I don't understand you, Cal. How come you always spring back like Ibis? Nothing bad ever seems to affect you."