Ulaume heard about how Terez and Pellaz grew up together, Terez being a year younger than his brother, while Dorado was a couple of years older than Pell. Pellaz had not known it, but Terez had been awake for most of the night while Cal had conducted his big seduction. He had heard some of what had been said, even though Pell and Cal had talked, for the most part, in whispers.
‘I fell asleep, and dreamed I left home with them,’ he said, ‘but when I awoke, it was too late, because they were gone. For a long time, I hated Pell for that, even as I mourned his loss. But I knew I only had to wait, and I was right, because eventually the… others came.’
‘Who killed your family,’ Ulaume said. ‘Didn’t you feel anything about that?’
‘They were no longer my family,’ Terez answered. ‘I could not allow myself to feel pain. I had to endure whatever it took and be strong enough to do so. I had to follow Pell.’
As perhaps, Ulaume thought, he had always done.
‘Do you ever think of your human family?’ Terez asked.
‘No,’ Ulaume said, and it was true.
‘Then don’t expect me to,’ Terez said.
‘But Mima is here. She is… well, we’re not really sure what she is, but she’s not quite human any more.’
‘She and Pell were very close,’ Terez said. ‘She was never like the other girls. If she has found a way to survive in this new world, then I respect her for it.’
‘There are some tribes,’ Ulaume said, ‘that… even within Wraeththu have a bad reputation. There is a darkness to you, Terez. I’m sure you know that. Could it have come from your inception? Who were the hara that incepted you? Can you remember anything about them?’
Terez glanced at Ulaume keenly. ‘I was with them for such a short time, but one of them, he taught me many things. He told me about Kakkahaar, your tribe, and some of the others. He told me who were his enemies and who were not.’
‘Are Kakkahaar enemies of his?’
‘They are not to be trusted.’
Terez had spent a week with the hara who’d ransacked his home, and at the end of this time, one of them had incepted him. Althaia had caused him to lose track of what happened next. Mercifully, he could not remember that it had been Mima who’d dragged him away from his newfound family.
Flick or Mima brought trays of food to the room and left them outside the door, which Ulaume regularly collected. On the evening of the second day, he took all the scraps and plates downstairs and found all his companions in the kitchen, who went silent when he walked in.
Then Flick said, ‘We were just debating whether to break down the door to your room. We wondered what had happened to you.’
‘Still alive,’ Ulaume said. He glanced behind him, closed the door by leaning on it, then went to the table and put down the trays. ‘Listen, I must speak quickly. Mima, all of you, guard your thoughts. Guard them well, at every moment. Terez is something more than we all imagined.’
‘What do you mean?’ Mima hissed.
‘Don’t let him know what you did, Mima. Never!’ Ulaume said. ‘He would hate you for it. He wanted to be Wraeththu and he is angry at what was taken from him.’
Mima turned away. Lileem only stared up at Ulaume, her face white, her eyes wide.
‘What are you trying to tell us?’ Flick asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Ulaume said. ‘Just that we’ve got more on our hands than we bargained for. Terez is no addled, wandering soul. He’s back with a vengeance.’
‘He will never be like you,’ Lileem said, in a small voice. ‘I told you that.’
‘You didn’t listen to me, did you,’ Ulaume said to Flick. ‘I cautioned against this. Now, we must cope with the consequences.’
And the consequences made themselves known swiftly. Terez appeared shortly after Ulaume had come downstairs. He had taken a bath and dressed himself in some clothes that Ulaume had found for him. Flick uttered some awkward remarks about making dinner, but Terez ignored him. He spoke directly to Mima. ‘We will leave tomorrow,’ he said.
Mima looked flustered, which was not a usual state for her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I am going to seek my brothers. I acknowledge that, because you have been changed, you should fall under my protection. You will come with me.’
‘No,’ Mima said. ‘I don’t want to do that.’
‘That is your choice,’ Terez said, ‘but I think it is what Pell would have wanted.’
‘He’s dead,’ Mima said. ‘We have no real proof otherwise.’
‘You have no idea what death is,’ Terez said. ‘We will find him.’
‘How?’ Mima said. ‘It’s a big world out there. Dorado could be dead too, for all we know. Stay here a while, heal yourself. Then think about the future.’
While Mima was speaking, Ulaume silently begged her to let Terez go. Nothing but trouble would come of him remaining among them. They had done their job in bringing back his mind, now they should let him do what he wanted. But Mima blocked out his call. She was obsessed, full of guilt.
‘This place is not fit to live in,’ Terez said. ‘It should be allowed to return to dust. It is wrong what you are doing here. If you want to survive, you must learn to become har, and you won’t do that here.’
‘What if I can’t become har?’ Mima snapped. ‘What if I’m safer here, where hara don’t want to kill me?’
‘Nowhere is safe,’ Terez said, ‘not without a tribe. I learned this before I was taken into darkness.’
‘Then go!’ Mima cried, then shook her head, raking her hands through her hair. ‘But not yet. Please. You are the only one left. Stay here a while with me. Help me become har, if that’s what I should do.’
Ulaume exchanged a glance with Flick, who stood mortified by the sink. Neither of them knew how to defuse this situation. They had brought something into the house and it was not what they’d thought it was.
Flick went out into the garden and Ulaume followed him. Now, there was a reticence between them, as if their night of bliss had never been.
‘I’m sorry about this,’ Ulaume said. He wanted to take Flick in his arms, but sensed Flick didn’t want it. No doubt he was repulsed by the aura of Terez’s essence, which must be hanging around Ulaume in a foul cloud.
‘It’s all right,’ Flick said, bending down to pluck out some weeds from the flower beds. ‘I know what you have to do.’
‘He just needs strength,’ Ulaume said.
‘I know. It was me who suggested it. I’m OK, really.’
‘Flick.’
Flick sighed and stood up. He turned to face Ulaume and his expression was resigned. ‘We had a job to do. We did it. We had fun doing it. Now, you have another job to do.’
The coldness in his tone made Ulaume’s heart freeze. ‘Fine,’ he said and went back into the house.
He did not see Flick crouch down again and put his hands against his face.
One of the first things Terez did was to go down among the dwellings below the hill and set fire to them. Flick was furious about this pointless waste, and realised that he was watching his dreams of a new Saltrock go up in smoke. He watched Terez from the hill, a tall dark figure against the flames. The flames were his anger, his bitterness. He would purge the landscape where he had lived as an animal for so long.
Terez slept with Ulaume every night, because he needed aruna to make him strong. It was clear that Ulaume had ambivalent feelings about this, although he did not speak to Flick about it. Flick realised he had succeeded in freezing Ulaume off, which was not what he had intended. Mima told Flick that Ulaume had confessed to her he was drawn to Terez’s dark force, and also that he wanted to hear as much as he could about Pellaz’s childhood. Wraeththu were supposed to cast off the past, but perhaps in Pell’s history lay the secret of why he was so different to other hara. So far, no useful information had been forthcoming. Pell had not been born in a thunderstorm or a hurricane. He had not appeared psychic as a boy. He had not had prophetic dreams. It wa
s obvious he had been enchanting and the most favoured son in the family, but Ulaume hoped to find something deeper than this. If Terez knew more than Mima did about their brother, he was keeping the information private.
Flick felt resentful of the way Terez commanded Ulaume’s attention. He had opened himself up to aruna again only for it to be denied him. There were no illusions that he had fallen in love with Ulaume: Flick knew the feelings he had were entirely physical. He knew that Ulaume was aware of how he felt and probably would have been happy to share his time with Flick, but Flick couldn’t bear the thought of being intimate with a har who was intimate with Terez. He also thought that Ulaume was scared of Terez, and that was mainly why he took aruna with him so often, but Ulaume would never admit that, even to himself. Terez was frightening. He was an implacable force that was entirely self-serving. He was not really har, because half of him was missing: the feeling half. But, as each day passed, Terez grew more physically attractive. One day, he would be devastating, and Flick imagined that the only har who might be able to contain him then was Cal. Terez had a disturbing gaze, not because it was empty, but because it was so full of things Flick could not understand or interpret. Sometimes, it felt as if Terez might leap up, kill and devour him. Terez despised them all, including Mima. The closeness they’d experienced at the falls had been ephemeral. Flick wondered whether Terez suspected the truth about his sister. If so, she might be in danger.
After a month or so had passed, it was clear to Flick that Mima’s tolerance of Terez’s strange behaviour was wearing thin. She wanted to love him and be loved by him, but he barely acknowledged her existence. He didn’t remain at the white house because of her, but for some other reason, about which Flick could only conjecture. Flick was sure Terez didn’t regard either Mima or Lileem as abominations to be expunged; he simply wasn’t interested in them at all. Mima’s eyes became haunted and sad. Therefore, when the household woke up one morning to find Terez gone, along with Flick’s pony, none of them were really sorry. Flick was angry and saddened to lose Ghost, but perhaps the sacrifice was worth it, if it meant Terez was no longer around. They had performed their incautious charitable act, borne the unforeseen consequences, and now it was time to move on.
That night, Ulaume came to Flick’s room and Flick said nothing. He merely opened up the covers and allowed Ulaume to climb in beside him. There was no point in condemning Ulaume for his absence. He was his own creature, perhaps more like Terez than he was like Flick. They shared breath, and Flick pulled away, because he could taste something dark and sour.
‘Make it go away,’ Ulaume said. ‘Please. You are stronger.’
So Flick poured his heart and soul into Ulaume’s being, a fierce radiance to cast out the shadows. As ouana, he had the power to command the darkness to depart.
Lying in Flick’s arms, Ulaume asked, ‘What have we learned from all this, Flick?’
‘That we shouldn’t expect gratitude,’ Flick replied. ‘I was an idiot, and you were right. We should have put a pillow over his head months ago.’
The Cevarro house had burned to the ground, and all the ghosts in the settlement had fled. Tonight, the breeze that came in through the window smelled of charred wood. ‘Perhaps we should move on now,’ Ulaume said. ‘Find somewhere else to live.’
‘He won’t come back,’ Flick said. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘It’s not just that. I don’t feel safe here now and it’s nothing to do with Terez.’ Ulaume turned his head to the side and the fact that he was anxious kindled a similar feeling in Flick’s heart.
Long after Ulaume had gone to sleep, Flick sat by the window, staring out over the dark landscape. Just before dawn, he saw the serpent of lights.
Chapter Seventeen
Flick shook Ulaume awake, pointed wordlessly at the window, then hurried to Mima and Lileem’s room to wake them too.
‘Get up!’ he hissed at Mima, shaking her roughly.
She sat up quickly, instantly alert. ‘What is it?’
‘Company,’ Flick said. ‘And I don’t feel good about it. Go to the wine cellar. Take Lileem. Hide.’
‘But who…?’
‘Don’t ask questions. I don’t know. Just hurry.’
As he left, he heard Lileem’s sleepy voice murmuring querulously, and Mima’s soft response.
He met Ulaume in the corridor outside his room. ‘There are twenty-two hara below the hill,’ Ulaume said.
‘I warned the others,’ Flick said. ‘Told them to hide. There are twenty-two you can see, there may be more.’
‘They are probing us. I felt it.’
‘Who are they?’
‘I don’t know. They are more organised than a rogue troupe. Perhaps we’ve been wrong all along about what kind of hara initially ransacked this place, and perhaps the ones responsible have returned.’
‘Have they come back for Terez? Did he call them? Is he with them?’ Flick did not expect answers to these questions and Ulaume did not provide them.
‘This could be bad,’ Ulaume said. ‘We should think about escape.’
‘How? They obviously know we’re here and no doubt have us surrounded. It couldn’t be your tribe, could it?’
‘No,’ Ulaume said. ‘They’re not Kakkahaar.’ He narrowed his eyes, thinking. ‘We have no choice but to try and be friendly, compliant. You might not like what you’ll have to do, but it could mean your survival.’
‘Will they have picked up on Lileem and Mima?’
‘I hope not. They were scanning for harish life force. It does mean they have a powerful shaman with them. They must be from an established tribe.’
‘So what do we do?’
Ulaume took Flick’s arm. ‘Come on. Let me do the talking. Shield your thoughts. Act dumb.’
By the time they reached the kitchen, the intruders had entered the garden. They were moving through it purposefully and slowly, destroying plants underfoot. They had weapons, manmade guns from an earlier time. Flick could barely breathe. Their expressionless faces were painted with savage stripes and their hair was moulded into fierce spikes. These were warrior hara, the kind who’d prowled the perimeter of his childhood home and who had eventually breached its defences. They were not at all like the Wraeththu with whom he was familiar.
‘We are har,’ Ulaume said. ‘Remember that. We mustn’t show fear, only respect and dignity.’
‘You handle it,’ Flick said. ‘I’ll quite happily forget how to talk.’
Ulaume went to the kitchen door and opened it. At once, guns were raised and pointed right at him. Flick lurked in the shadows. He saw Ulaume limned against the light, raising his hands in a non-threatening gesture.
‘Greetings,’ Ulaume said and bowed a little.
One of the hara stepped forward. When he spoke, Flick could see his teeth had been filed into points. He carried facial scars and could not be termed beautiful. Clearly, he had opted for a fearsome appearance instead. ‘You are not the one,’ he said. ‘Where is he?’
Ulaume lowered his hands. ‘You are looking for somehar?’
‘He was known as Terez.’
‘He still is, but I’m afraid he’s no longer here. If he has called you, then he must have gone looking for you.’
Flick could see that this suggestion was accepted by the savage har, and it also seemed as if the threatening troupe were on the point of leaving, because the spokeshar turned to them, muttered abruptly, and they lowered their weapons. But then another har arrived on the scene, riding a beautiful black horse. His hair was like the halo of the sun and his grey gaze looked as if it could melt steel. He was clearly the troupe leader and his horse trampled the flowerbeds that Flick had nurtured with his own hands.
‘What is this?’ the troupe leader demanded.
‘The lost one is no longer here,’ said the fanged har.
‘You!’ The leader pointed at Ulaume. ‘Come out where I can see you.’
Ulaume slunk from the shadows of the house. Flick coul
d not see his face, but could imagine its expression: sultry and sensuous. Ulaume had gone into survival mode.
‘A har was stolen from us,’ said the leader. ‘We thought him dead. Then we receive a call from him and we come back. Where is he?’
Ulaume put his hands together and bowed slowly. Pure grace. He straightened up and shook his hair, which in the still air moved as if in a breeze. ‘Terez was sick because of the incomplete inception. I re-incepted him and he decided to leave, to seek you out. He must have been calling to you since he regained his wits.’ A pause. ‘And I can see why.’
The troupe leader’s expression did not even flicker. ‘What are you doing here? Why are you in this human house? Who else is with you?’
‘There are two of us,’ Ulaume said. ‘We are staying here temporarily.’
‘You have no tribe. Why?’
‘We are shamans, taking leave of our kind in order to study.’
‘And who are your kind?’
Flick perceived Ulaume’s brief pause and hoped the others did not. He must be debating whether to say Kakkahaar or Saltrock.
‘Kakkahaar,’ Ulaume said.
‘Kakkahaar do not roam alone. They are scavengers who travel in packs.’
‘I am Kakkahaar,’ Ulaume said. ‘Why should I lie when you could so easily find out for yourself?’
The troupe leader curled his upper lip contemptuously, then gestured at the fanged har. ‘Taste it!’ he said.
What the fanged har did could not be described as sharing breath, because he simply grabbed hold of Ulaume and sucked the air from his lungs. Flick cringed, shrinking back against the table in the darkness of the kitchen. He imagined those monster teeth grinding against his own mouth. His heart was beating so fast, he thought he might lose consciousness. He realised he had never truly been afraid in his life before.
The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure Page 27