The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure

by Storm Constantine

  ‘Don’t misinterpret my words,’ Flick said. ‘I’m not envious of you. Given the choice, I’d rather have my life than yours.’

  Pellaz smiled. ‘Well, one of the reasons I’m Tigron is because I think it’s worth the price. I’m not bewailing my lot, Flick. I’m privileged and I enjoy it. Most of the time.’

  ‘Just the few awkward glitches from the past, eh?’ Flick bit hungrily into his sandwich.

  ‘Seel misses you,’ Pellaz said.

  Flick nearly choked, but managed to swallow before spraying the Tigron with food. His laughter was genuine. ‘Is that what he says?’

  ‘He thinks you were… influenced to leave Saltrock.’

  ‘I was. I heard a few home truths, that’s all. It was the best thing.’ He wondered how long the conversation would go on before one of them said Cal’s name.

  ‘You know how it seems to me?’ Flick said. ‘Some hara in the world seek power, others don’t. You and Seel fall into the former category, Cal and I the latter.’ There, it was said. ‘It was perhaps the biggest thing we had in common for a while.’

  ‘Cal and you?’ Pellaz said.

  ‘Yes. We had a… thing for a while in Saltrock. Didn’t Seel tell you about us?’

  Pellaz shook his head.

  It would have been so easy to descend into Ulaume mode and turn the knife. The idea held great appeal, but Flick could see the har he had once known looking out of that beautiful face beside him, and just couldn’t bring himself to do it. ‘He loves you so much,’ he said softly. ‘I have never seen anyhar so much in love.’

  Pellaz turned away. ‘Some call it obsession.’

  ‘They can call it what they like, but I believe it’s something that transcends death and distance. It’s not over, Pell. It never will be.’

  Pellaz nodded, and Flick saw his throat convulse. He imagined the Tigron had swallowed tears so many times he could do it without thinking now.

  ‘Thanks,’ Pellaz said in a husky voice. He stared at Flick unflinchingly. ‘Did he really do it, Flick? Seel said you were there…’

  ‘Yes, he did it,’ Flick replied. ‘None of us can wipe that fact out, I’m afraid. I saw Cal come out of the Nayati. I never told Seel, but I knew Orien was dead long before anyhar else. I just couldn’t bring myself to speak of it. I felt soiled, responsible…’ He sighed. ‘It doesn’t matter now.’

  ‘Seel always suspected that, you know.’

  ‘I thought he did. We weren’t close enough to discuss it, Pell. I was just Seel’s convenient servant.’

  ‘It’s sad you think that way.’

  ‘He virtually kidnapped me in Galhea.’

  ‘He did that for me. He knows it was… unwise.’

  ‘And now he has a new family. As do you, I’ve heard.’

  Pell pulled a sour face. ‘Now that’s another story, believe me. Thiede tricked me into it, although… It’s a long story.’

  ‘Tell me, I’m interested.’

  Pell didn’t speak for a few moments. Then he said, ‘I could show you.’

  ‘I’m not coming to Immanion. Please don’t make an issue of it.’

  Pellaz laughed. ‘No, I didn’t mean that. I can see you fit comfortably into this landscape. I meant this.’ He put down his sandwich and reached to take Flick’s face in his hands.

  Flick tried to pull away. ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Pellaz said. ‘I won’t pry. I just want to show you what happened.’

  To Pellaz, the sharing of breath was an efficient method of transferring information. Perhaps he was aware of what his living physical self could do to a har, and perhaps he took satisfaction in that, but while Flick wilted in drifts of perfumed essence, he merely told a story. He showed Flick a summer night in a town called Ferelithia, and a brief encounter with a har named Caeru. This was before Pellaz had ever seen Immanion. That night was magical, a turning point: it was the night Pell and Caeru conceived a pearl. And Pellaz just walked away from it into his big new life. Turned his back. When Caeru turned up in Immanion, some time later, Thiede had declared Pellaz should take him as a consort and proclaim their son his heir. Simple. Only Pellaz was too tangled up inside about Cal, dying for love in a slow painful way, and in Caeru he saw only a whipping post, because every time he saw Caeru’s face, he remembered the one he had loved and lost.

  If Pellaz had wanted to dredge Flick’s mind for facts in return, he could easily have done so, but he didn’t. When he drew away, Flick fell backwards and hit his head sharply on the rock behind him. He felt nauseous from more than the just the impact.

  Pellaz touched the back of Flick’s head and a blast of heat surged into Flick’s skull. Then it didn’t hurt any more. ‘Sorry,’ Pellaz said. ‘I should have warned you.’

  ‘That’s some story,’ Flick said inadequately.

  ‘That’s part of why I don’t judge Ulaume now,’ Pellaz said. ‘We all have our dark sides.’

  ‘A consort you despise and a broken heart. And you tell me it’s worth being Tigron?’ His lips were still numb.

  ‘Yes, it’s still worth it. I will achieve great things. I won’t waste what’s been given to me.’

  ‘The sacrificial king for all hara on earth.’

  ‘If you like. I used to be like you, but I’m not any more. I can’t be.’

  Flick wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that. ‘And you’re here just for the sake of old acquaintance?’

  Pellaz raised his knees and rested his cheek upon them, gazing at Flick steadily. ‘I’m here because I wanted to talk to you, to somehar who isn’t part of what I am now. I’m here because of who and what you are, Flick. I know, in you, I’ll find refreshing honesty, something simple and straight forward, something clean.’

  ‘Is that a compliment?’

  ‘I don’t know. Is it?’

  ‘You are very powerful and you can have what you want,’ Flick said. ‘Maybe you’re looking for a confessional priest.’

  Pellaz laughed. ‘There’s an idea! I’m enjoying this. I knew I would.’

  ‘This is bizarre. I feel we should know one another, and my memory tells me we do, but we don’t at all.’

  ‘I know. But we can remedy that.’

  ‘Will you see Ulaume?’

  Pellaz considered. ‘I don’t think so. I sense neediness in him. He wants something from me. You don’t.’

  ‘That puts me in a position.’

  ‘That’s a pity.’

  Flick was already wondering whether he’d be able to tell Ulaume about this, and then, of course, there was Mima. Part of him wanted to tell Pellaz about Mima, because he knew how close they’d once been. Would he feel the same way about her as he did about Terez, if he knew she’d undergone a kind of inception? If Pellaz were anyhar but the Tigron, perhaps it would be safe to tell, but Flick knew the repercussions could be dreadful. They could ruin his life in Roselane.

  ‘Can we do this sometimes?’ Pellaz asked. ‘Just talk?’

  ‘Do I have a choice?’ Flick snapped, hearing Ulaume in his voice.

  Pellaz was silent for a while. ‘I’d prefer to talk with you only if you wanted it.’

  ‘I don’t know. There’s Lor to consider. If I keep our meeting secrets, he’d sense I was hiding something, and I don’t want to threaten our relationship. If I told him, he’d want to meet you too.’

  ‘But what do you want?’

  Flick considered, and it didn’t take very long. He knew what he wanted, but managed to stop himself saying it. ‘It’d be difficult, Pell. Of course I want to meet with the Tigron of Immanion in private. What har wouldn’t? And of course I want to talk to an old friend. But…’ He realised, ultimately, that it was Mima and Lileem, and knowledge of the Kamagrian, which stood between them, not Ulaume. If he continued to see Pellaz, whether secretly or not, he’d end up knowing about the Roselane.

  ‘You have secrets, I know,’ Pellaz said. ‘See how good a friend I was, not looking at them? Are they that bad, Flick?’

&n
bsp; ‘No,’ Flick answered. ‘One day… I’m sure that one day…’ He couldn’t think what to say. There might never be a time when Wraeththu could know about the Kamagrian.

  ‘If you don’t want to talk about what happened with you and Cal, you don’t have to.’

  ‘I don’t think it would do you any good.

  ‘Now you sound like Thiede,’ Pellaz said. He stood up. ‘I will find you sometimes. We’ll make no arrangements. And if you need me…’

  ‘How?’ Flick asked.

  ‘I would be breaking every code of Gelaming law if I told you,’ he said, ‘because some of our technology, if you can call it that, is not for the everyhar. That is all I’ll say.’

  He went to the lip of the rock ledge and uttered a piercing whistle. The sedim were not that far away. Perhaps they’d been eavesdropping. It dawned on Flick what Pellaz had meant. Astral. He was a means to contact Immanion any time, if Flick could only work out how. Vaysh had put restraints on the beast. Would Pellaz now remove them? He dared not ask, sensing his question would not be answered. It was up to him to work it out, if he ever had need to.

  Then, there was another possibility.

  Flick stood up and joined Pellaz at the edge of the rock. They watched the sedim come towards them. ‘Did you help us on the ocean when the Gelaming came for us?’ Flick asked. ‘Did you hear a call?’

  Pellaz nodded. ‘A har in your company called upon me, but I had established a link with you, in any case. I was keeping an eye on things after what happened in Galhea. I sent out a troupe of hara to escort you to your destination, but the Roselane hid you from them. A pity. That would have avoided the unpleasant experience at sea.’

  Flick laughed. ‘I never realised! We ran from the wrong hara.’

  ‘Well, you had no way of knowing, so I can hardly blame you. Thiede sent hara out to look for you because he sensed a secret. Seel’s and my fault, probably. Still, it was best you avoided capture. No doubt if you hadn’t, you’d be set up as somehar’s consort somewhere now, doing Thiede’s work.’

  ‘Like Seel?’

  Pellaz gave Flick a considered glance, but did not respond to the remark. ‘You have some powerful friends. You don’t really need my help, certainly not now. Jaddayoth is spawning some interesting hara, as you are spawning interesting ideas about gods. We must talk of this some time.’

  ‘Yes,’ Flick said. ‘I’m not sure I like the idea of being watched.’

  ‘It’s a Gelaming habit I’ve picked up.’

  ‘A pity you couldn’t have helped when I ran into Seel, then.’

  Pellaz laughed. ‘Oh Flick, don’t you get it? I was at that party in Galhea. Nohar knew it, but I saw what happened. I had already vowed to find you one day, and then, there you were.’

  ‘Do you do that often?’ Flick asked. ‘Spy on your friends? Did Cobweb and Seel know you were there?’

  ‘No. I was there because I sensed I would learn something important, and I did.’ He kissed Flick briefly on the cheek. ‘There are no surprises, my friend.’

  After Pellaz had gone, Flick sat and stared at the sky for over an hour, but not in quite the same contented mood he’d enjoyed before. No surprises. Pellaz was wrong. There was a lot he didn’t know.

  There are so many things I should have asked him, Flick thought. Next time…

  Flick lingered in the mountain meadows until long after sundown. He was sure that the moment he set foot in the house, his companions would sense at once that something enormous had happened. He dreaded looking into Ulaume’s eyes. Like Cal had in the past, it seemed Pellaz had already made a liar of him. Pellaz and Cal were two halves of the same being. Did the Tigron know where Cal was now?

  However, coincidence, the most potent of cosmic forces, was working in Flick’s favour. When he finally mustered the courage to return home, he walked in on another enormous happening. The whole household had been thrown into a flustered panic, because a har had turned up for dinner. A har, who was now sitting at the kitchen table, filling the room with his dark, smouldering presence. Terez Cevarro.

  Chapter Thirty

  Lileem had quickly discovered her vocation lay in caring for animals. Tel-an-Kaa had found a good job for her in Opalexian’s personal stable, and now she cared for some of the finest horses in the land. Not as fine as Astral, of course, but still beautiful specimens.

  For some weeks after their arrival in Shilalama, Lileem had meditated before her statue of the Tigron every night, but whatever brief contact she felt she’d had with him seemed to have vanished. He had helped them, but why had it ended there? He knew where they were. Gradually, her interest in him faded, because he seemed to have no relevance in Roselane and real life considerations took over.

  Lileem had quickly made many friends among the Roselane, as had Mima, who with her prior experience in farming had secured a good position as a farm overseer on the outskirts of Shilalama. Again, Tel-an-Kaa had had a hand in making sure Mima had landed a decent job. Although it was her life’s work to scour the world for straying Kamagrian and bring them to the fold of Roselane, the Zigane clearly had special feelings for Lileem and Mima. Whenever she was in the city, she would come for dinner, or invite them to her home. This friendship gave Lileem and Mima high status among the Kamagrian. Both of them, however, secretly felt they were closer to the hara they knew than to the parazha who were so eager to embrace them into their sisterhood. There was something about Kamagrian with which neither Lileem nor Mima felt entirely comfortable. Mima especially was contemptuous of the emphasis on the female side of their being. It was a subject that obsessed her and she’d come to the conclusion that all hara and parazha simply continued to identify with the gender they’d once been and that was the main difference between them. When Mima learned that some Kamagrian, who considered themselves amongst the most spiritual of their kind, had actually had their ouana-lim surgically removed, she was incensed. ‘That is not the message Opalexian should be giving parazha,’ she said. ‘It’s irresponsible and sick.’

  Lileem just thought it was stupid and that the parazha concerned had problems that weren’t really being dealt with. Meditation and prayer were all very well, but the physical body was important too. This, she decided, was what she and Mima liked most about Wraeththu. Aruna between Kamagrian was not as common place as it was among hara, where it was as much a part of social etiquette as sharing a drink or a meal. Many Kamagrian felt uncomfortable with their male aspects and sought to subsume them. She supposed that Wraeththu did the same with their female sides, although not so much in a sexual sense. What a tragic mess.

  Tel-an-Kaa, for all her rhetoric and often bombastic nature, was more balanced than any other parage Lileem had met. She had seen the Zigane’s real self, and it was not that much different from Ulaume or Flick. But Tel-an-Kaa would not hear a word against other parazha or their – to Lileem – misguided ways. She just said that all parazha should accept how their sisters wanted to live.

  ‘They are just too nice,’ Mima once said scathingly of their new friends. ‘By Aru, I almost crave seeing Terez again, just to experience a bit of healthy dark!’

  Her words, it transpired, were prophetic.

  Lileem was alone in the house when a knock came at the front door. All their friends always came to the back door, which was never shut in warm weather, so Lileem knew it had to be a stranger who’d come calling. She’d just begun to prepare the evening meal, and went to answer the knock with a knife in one hand. She opened it and a black shadow fell over her.

  ‘Hello Lee,’ said Terez, smiling. ‘Put down the knife. I hope there’s no need for it.’

  ‘Terez!’ Lileem exclaimed, in a voice she was sure sounded like a strangled squeak. ‘You’re here! You found us!’

  ‘Were you hiding from me?’

  She stood aside to let him into the house. ‘We had to leave Megalithica so quickly, we had no chance to tell you. I always wondered whether we’d see you again.’

  ‘Well, you are.’
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  She led him into the kitchen. ‘So much has changed.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. He sat down at the table and rummaged in the leather satchel he carried. ‘I hope you don’t mind me turning up like this.’

  ‘Mind?’ He’d never cared about that before. Lileem laughed nervously. ‘I kind of missed you.’

  Terez pulled a smoking pipe out of the satchel. ‘When you were a harling, you always used to watch me. I know you never liked what you saw. But, when we used to meet on the river, it was you who was most welcoming. I noticed that. Share a smoke?’

  Lileem had been thrown into confusion by these disclosures. ‘Better not. I have to get dinner ready.’ Strange how she could sound so calm, when inwardly war had just broken out. ‘There’s wine in the larder. Do you want some with that?’

  ‘OK.’

  She dried her hands on a towel. ‘Won’t be a moment.’

  Terez stuffed his pipe with hemp. ‘Lileem the harling has gone for good. You’re quite the grown up har now, aren’t you.’

  ‘It happens. Time does that to a har, you know.’

  ‘Sorry, I keep remembering that grubby faced imp back home and the awkward coltish creature on the ‘Esmeraldarine’. Now, here you are, in full flower.’

  Lileem knew her face was bright red and could do nothing to change it. ‘You’re not exactly the suppurating husk you once were, either,’ she said, and fled the room.

  She went into the larder to compose herself, convinced her heart would burst from her chest at any moment. He was so much more handsome than she remembered, if that was possible. Images of Terez prior to his re-inception no longer seemed real. ‘Remember Chelone,’ she told herself. ‘Don’t be an idiot.’ She must never betray to him that she’d fantasised about seeing him again a thousand times.

  She brought out the flagon, crafted by Ulaume’s own hand and decorated with pictures of inebriated hara, and poured him a gobletful with a steady hand. ‘Did you get to meet Pellaz?’

  Terez pulled a sour face. ‘No. I did get to Immanion, but my dear brother is such an exalted har now, I couldn’t get near him. I was heavily dissuaded, in fact, and old family ties have no importance now.’