The Wraeththu Chronicles

by Storm Constantine

  Once again, Forever held its breath. Terzian carried on making preparations for the trek south, grimly waiting for Ponclast to return. I had word that Gahrazel had asked for me, but I turned my back on him. I felt he had tried to drag me down with him, and wondered if this was because he suspected it had been me who'd betrayed him. Nobody had a good word for him any more. Suddenly, everyone had been suspecting something like this happening for ages, even Swithe. Cal made a half-hearted attack on Swithe one evening over his rather abrupt change of heart, but was not interested enough to pursue it. I could see that Swithe had been thoroughly shaken up by what had happened. It was one thing to moan about Terzian behind his back, but it was something else entirely to stand up and be honest and face Terzian's wrath. Gahrazel was being held captive in Gal-hea. He never set foot in Forever again.

  When Ponclast returned, an emergency meeting was held in the house. I saw Ponclast once in the hall. His face was gray; he looked right through me. I felt quite sorry for him. Obviously, both Terzian and Ponclast were aware of the detrimental effect it would have had on their warriors' morale if Gahrazel had got away with his defection. The whole affair was seen as high treason and the punishment would have to fit the crime. Terzian asked me if I would like to be present at the meeting. This was an honor, but I declined. Terzian did not press it. He was still under the impression that my last moments with Gahrazel had been spent aflame with the ecstasy of aruna. It is a sacred act, even to Varrs. "This must be hard for you," he said.

  Ithiel had been sent some miles east on some errand or another. I heard my father say to him before he left, "Take the girl with you." I was surprised by this act of understanding. I knew that he looked upon humans with the same amount of respect as he looked upon dogs. I don't think Purah had ever ceased to be human in his eyes, but because Bryony was part of his staff and had proved her worth, she was less human than honorary har. Terzian always looked after the things he valued, or so I thought.

  On the evening following the meeting, Leef came to the house to report to my father. Now he had been promoted again, to Ithiel's second in command, and was currently carrying out all Ithiel's duties while he was away. Perhaps his second promotion had been some kind of consolation because he had lost the honor of taking part in my Feybraiha. It seemed likely. We passed each other in the hall as he went to my father's study and he gave me a curt greeting. I suffered a pang of remorse, being only too aware of how once I had led him on to believe I desired him. Still jumpy because of Gahrazel, I decided I'd try to smooth things over between us. Secure in a new sense of power, I summoned one of the house-hara and told him to wait outside Terzian's study until Leef came out. "Take him to the red salon," I said. "And have someone build a fire in there."

  It was a room we hardly ever used and all the furniture was uncomfortable in there. It was a room for formality, perhaps not the best that I could have chosen, but I knew there would be no privacy anywhere else and I shrank from asking Leef to go anywhere upstairs with me.

  Fortifying myself with several glasses of wine in the kitchen, not even sure why I wanted to see him, I made Leef wait for ten minutes before I went in to him. "Oh, have I kept you waiting?" I asked, pausing at the door, with what I hoped looked like magnificence. Leef smiled uncertainly, standing in the middle of the room, awkward as ever. He never liked being in Forever. He never relaxed there. Now I too had seen a little of the Terzian he knew and feared, so I was more sympathetic.

  After a few minutes' stilted conversation, I said, "So, now that you're Ithiel's second, you won't have to go south with my father again, will you?"

  "No," he agreed warily. "It was rather a surprise. Unexpected. Ithiel never paid me much attention before." I could see him wondering what I wanted, what he was doing there.

  "In a way, it was because of me that you were promoted," I said, hoping to make him think better of me.

  "Was it?" he said, wondering whether he should thank me or not. His pride won; he didn't thank me. I offered him some wine, one of Yarrow's best, and he sat down hesitantly in a stiff chair, appraising the room, no doubt thinking how horrible and unfriendly it was. "Why did you want to see me?" he asked.

  "I don't know," I admitted. "When we passed each other in the hall, I thought . . . You're cross with me, aren't you!"

  "Cross with you? Why should I be?" he asked defensively.

  "I'm not teasing you," I said.

  "No?"

  "No. My Feybraiha ... it was something I had no control over," I said.

  "Look!" Leef stood up hurriedly. "I don't want to discuss anything like this with you."

  "Don't go! I just want to apologize ..."

  "Apologize?" For a moment he relaxed enough to be angry. "For what? Maybe I presumed too much. Hints dropped by you, then by Ithiel. Next, I'm told that circumstances have

  changed. I need no explanation other than that! Now, if you don't mind . . ." He put his glass down clumsily on a spindly-legged table that rocked dangerously.

  "I didn't know they'd actually asked you!" I exclaimed helplessly.

  "They didn't! I made a fool of myself, that's all!" I envisaged how he must have told all his friends. It must have been excruciating for him, even more so, having to be at the house attending the celebrations. "I'm sorry," I said inadequately.

  "Is there anything else?" he asked, with the coldest of eyes.

  "No . . ."

  "Then if you'll excuse me . . ."

  He sidled past me as if I would strike out and bite him.

  Later, my father summoned me to his study. I was still feeling distressed over the incident with Leef. Terzian looked very tired, his face white, his hair disheveled. It seemed to me that he was in no condition to begin traveling. From his appearance, it looked as if he hadn't slept for a week.

  "It's over," he said, as soon as I'd shut the door behind me.

  For a moment we just looked at each other. I thought he was upset because he'd been wondering about what it would have been like if it had been me and not Gahrazel. I reached to touch his hand.

  "What happened?" I asked.

  He closed his eyes and curled his fingers over my own. "Poison," he answered, as if he had a mouthful of it himself. "They . . . they made him drink poison."

  "Were you there?"

  He nodded. I had never seen him so distressed, but then Gahrazel's death could not have been a pleasant spectacle. Few substances are lethal to Wraeththu. Only the tribe of Uigenna have the art of it and what deadly elixirs they possess are death in its most agonizing, terrible form. Ponclast had obviously considered the bullet or the blade too quick a release for his traitor son.

  I went to Cal with my grief. "This has been one of the worst days of my life," I told him.

  "It is only the beginning," he replied mercilessly. "Just a foretaste of horrors to come. I know. Life just works that way."

  CHAPTER NINE

  Destiny Callasity gaping through the gashes

  At tender, childhood dreams,

  Can no longer recognize the fruit

  Disfigured on indignant vines.

  1 began my training in earnest. Once the Varr armies had headed south once more, amid pomp and sorrow, Ithiel started to teach me how to fight, how to defend myself, how to kill. I applied myself to my studies once more. Aihah, the Kakkahaar, had left me

  several books to look through; far from enough for me to gain any great benefit, but at least it gave me something to build on.

  Sometimes, Cal would come to my room at night. Sometimes we would only sleep together, needing company, but other times, we would scream and struggle and tear at each other until the dawn. He was voracious and the merest touch of him kindled my responsive frenzy. I knew that it didn't have to be that way, but we needed that rage somehow. We had so much pent-up energy, there was no other way to release it yet. Once, while we were feeding upon each other like vampires, howling like animals, Tyson woke up in the next room and started to cry in terror. For a moment, we were still, st
aring wide-eyed at each other. Then we began to laugh. I seemed to have changed so much, the sensitivity of my childhood dulled, a new hardness flowering within me.

  News rarely reached us from the south. The supernatural mist of the Gelaming seemed to have closed around the Varrs. They had found a way through, but nothing could follow them. Could anything come back out? Once, I tried to communicate with the Kakkahaar, but could not manage it. Either my art was too feeble or the Gelaming's power too strong. Most likely, it was a combination of both. With Cobweb's help, I could achieve the right state of mind, but where there should have been light was only a grey, impenetrable void, and I shrank from that.

  Dreams of greater power began once more to prowl through my sleeping mind. Often, Cal would have to shake me awake, alarmed by my muffled cries. Now, I could rarely remember the events I dreamed, even though I longed to. I knew I dreamed of a face that both scared and thrilled me, but I could never recall its appearance on waking. Cal would pull me from sleep and cry, "What is it?" and all I could reply was, "Eyes! Eyes!" Such haunting. It filled me with grief.

  At Festival, the household tried to carry on as usual. Cobweb invited Ithiel's hara up to the house and Yarrow began to prepare his customary, sumptuous fare. We got most of what we needed from Galhea, but the other things, more exotic foods and drink, which had once been obtained from farther afield, were no longer available to us. Two days before Festival night, we all gathered branches of evergreen from the gardens and decorated the house. That was when my father's presence was missed most. It was the first time since I had been born that he had not been home for Festival.

  We had a small, miserable party in the drawing room, where everyone drank too much and didn't get happy. Leef was there, but he barely looked at me. Bryony sat by the fire and, after her third glass of sheh, began to weep silently. Cobweb went to comfort her and I saw Cal looking at him.

  "Do you still think about the ivy?" I asked him.

  "Most days," he admitted. I laughed and everyone looked at me.

  When everyone had gone home or gone to bed, Cal and I lay beside the fire, sharing our cynicism. Some part of him was strangely distracted.

  "He hasn't slept much recently, has he?" he said, unexpectedly. "Haven't you noticed?"

  "My hostling, I presume," I answered acidly. "No, he looks tired. He misses Terzian, I suppose, in spite of everything."

  "In spite of me, you mean."

  "Yes, in spite of you."

  "Do you think he knows something?"

  "He tells me everything," I said. "What can he know that we don't?"

  "You know him better than I do."

  "Oh, I don't know. What with your constant and careful study of Cobweb ..."

  "Are you jealous?" he teased.

  "No, of course not." I rolled onto my back.

  "He must be lonely."

  "Cobweb is always lonely!"

  Cal stood up and looked at himself in the mirror above the mantelpiece.

  "Swift. . ." he said.

  I sat up. "I wouldn't advise it, Cal." I could see clearly what he was thinking.

  "Now or never," he said, cheerily. He went to the door.

  "Will I see you later?" I called.

  "I hope not!" he replied.

  For a while, I just sat staring at the shapes in the flames, shadows leaping beyond the hearth, thinking, what is happening to us? We are slipping, we are slipping. . . . Had Terzian ever said to Cal, "What is mine is yours"? Had he? Wood popped in the fire. I threw on another log. Behind me, stretching away, the house was silent. My ears strained to hear through that silence. There was nothing. I went out into the hall and stood looking up the dark stairs, one hand on the bannister, one foot on the bottom step. Bryony came out of the passage that led to the kitchen. "Shall I turn off the lights down here?" she asked and I must have nodded. Her footsteps died away, into the house. The hall was full of the smell of greenery; ivy hanging down from the lights, softly moving with the chime of glass, torn ivy on the red stair carpet.

  Cobweb's room was empty but his chair had been knocked over and there was a faint hint of outrage in the atmosphere. I ran up the corridor, up the few stairs that led to Cal's room, thinking that Cal had dragged or led Cobweb there, but the door was wide open and the room beyond in darkness. I was experiencing a strong sense of deja vu. This had happened before. I looked in on Ty, but he was sleeping peacefully. All the doorways looked hostile and silent, sealed mouths. Behind any one. ... A single, slight, echoing noise reached my ears. Prickles of cold broke out all over my skin. I prowled back down the haunted corridor and paused outside my father's door. Was anyone in there? I reached to knock, then hesitated. Perhaps Cobweb did know something. Were they in there? My father's room . . . Gahrazel's face was suddenly before my eyes, laughing. I could see him young again. Again, almost inaudible, a muffled sound reached me from within the room. It could have been anything; fear, anger, pain or submission. We shall know all of this house one day . . .

  Before I realized what I was doing, I was pelting back along the corridor, toward the steep, forbidding stairs that led to the upper stories. Winter lived there, my breath was steam and the eerie, violated darkness was terrible. But instinct guided me and horror of the waiting dark could not touch me. I could almost hear the echo of our voices, Gahrazel's and mine, so long ago, a lifetime away, scampering through these forgotten halls. His voice was so real to me. "Do you know nothing, Swift?"

  I found the room quite easily. Something flaked from the handle when I turned it. A supernatural rod of yellow light pointed upwards from the floor within. I went toward it and bent my face into its glow. Traveling down this ray of light, I saw below me, through a splintered hole that had waited here all this time for just this moment, my father's room. There were leaves everywhere as if the garden had bursting through the windows; a feeling of cold. I could sense the sparking presences of Cobweb and Cal, facing each other like unleashed elementals, but I could not see them. I heard Cal cry, "What will happen to us?!" and his voice lacked its usual confidence.

  My hostling, when he answered, sounded chill and distant. "I have seen it..."

  "Seen? Seen what?"

  Cobweb's voice was merely a whisper. "I saw a great smoke. You went into it. Swift was with you..." There was a pause and then he spoke again, ragged with haste. "You must go that way. It is your destiny . . ."Cal moved into my line of sight. He had hold of Cobweb by the wrist, which was bloodless, the hand curled into a dead claw. "Don't speak in riddles!" Cal cried impatiently.

  "That's what I saw."

  Cobweb's dead voice made me shiver. I steadied myself and bent lower to the floor.

  "When?" Cal demanded. He did not get an answer. "Oh yes, of course! This is what you've been waiting for, isn't it? Have you made it happen? You will be glad to see me gone! Is this a lie?"

  "No, I have not lied."

  "But you hate me!"

  "I speak the truth!" Cobweb wriggled away from Cal's grasp and put his taloned hands on Cal's shoulders as if to shake him. "Their Tigron is with them!" he cried, and his face was unbelievably white. The white of marble, of death. He crumpled into Cal's arms, so utterly without design, and it seemed Cal was nearly weeping.

  "What do you mean? Tell me! Who are they?"

  "Gelaming," my hostling rasped. "I have seen them . . . Not here ... in the smoke, in the mist above the lake. You will go to them, both of you, through the forest of fear, into the mouth of your sin, where the beast speaks, where the beast walks and his blood is our blood. Oh! There is no escaping . . ."

  I too wanted to scream, "What are you talking about?" but it was Cal's voice, not my own, ringing in my ears.

  "Soon ..." Cobweb straightened up and his hands fluttered to his face. "You want to bind me, but I am bound already," he said.

  "Cobweb . . . ?"

  My hostling backed away, very slowly. "You must take me; flesh to flesh, soul to soul. I have seen that too . . . many times."

  "Is it
something that you want?"

  Cobweb frowned, shook his head. "It is just something I have dreamed of."

  "Tell me about the dreams."

  "Not yet. Oh .. ." Cobweb sat down on the edge of my father's bed. "I shall be left alone and there will be a time of glass, like shattering, like shards of light, and the past shall come back like a shimmering veil... I shall be left alone, but not for long . . . Cal?"

  Cal did not even bother to conceal the fear in his face. Mostly I could see only the top of his head, but his body was held rigid as if ready to flee.

  "I want you now," my hostling said, with bizarre sanity, and held out his arms. I denied the vision of sanity. He is mad, I thought, quite mad.

  "I remember you, how you were before," Cal said to him.