Wolfking The Omnibus: Books 1-4

by Sarah Rayne

  “You studied the past?” said Taliesin.

  “Well,” said Annabel, “it was forbidden, really.” She leaned forward, her eyes bright. “But it was so fascinating. All the reports and the records going back and back to the times when people could behave as they wanted to behave, and when they had machines to do the work for them and when there were governments one to each country. And you could buy all the things you wanted, there was money for everyone, and you could work at pretty much whatever you wanted to work at.” She looked at them, remembering how she had stolen down to the cellars that lay beneath the Institute of Knowledge; how she had managed to operate the old machines of the previous century, how she had seen fragments and snippets of history unfold as she sat watching, enthralled.

  “I had to be so careful,” said Annabel, not seeing the other two now, staring ahead of her. “For one thing, power is so very sparse. There is barely enough for any of us. There was barely enough to work the machines.”

  “But — you did it?” Taliesin was leaning forward, his eyes intent. “Was it a very dangerous thing for you to do?”

  “Yes,” said Annabel, turning to look at him. “Yes, for if they had caught me, I should have been taken to the Cuirim at once.” The grin touched her face. “I think the danger was part of it,” she said. “At any minute, I could have been caught.”

  “But you were not?”

  “No. I saw so many things that the Drakon has tried to keep from us.”

  “How? I mean, how did you see it?” Taliesin’s mind went over diaries, chronicles, perhaps paintings which might illustrate events. But Annabel said, “Well, everything is stored, of course. And you call up whichever bit you want.”

  “How?”

  “You press buttons,” said Annabel, and looked at Taliesin, and then laughed. “But the power is so thin that everything on the screens was fuzzy and jerky —” She stopped. “I think you have not the least idea of what I mean,” she said, and laughed again, and Taliesin smiled, because her laughter was warm and abrupt, rather like a sudden shower of warm rain. “This is more ridiculous than ever,” said Annabel, pouring more coffee from the jug. “I cannot grasp the idea of a world that has not … Are you sure you are not a new kind of trap from the Drakon?”

  Fael-Inis said, very gently, “Remain very still, Mortal,” and as Annabel looked up, his eyes grew fiery and inwardlooking, and Annabel’s own eyes widened, and she said, in a gasp, “Oh! A million needles of light. And gold and silver. And — oh yes! Oh, how completely lovely!”

  Taliesin started to say “What —” but Annabel was staring entranced at Fael-Inis, her hands clasped, her eyes shining.

  “The most beautiful place I have ever seen,” she said. “And the people — there was something different about them — as if they possessed other powers, or as if — I do not believe this — but as if they were not entirely human.” She turned to Taliesin. “Is that your world?”

  Fael-Inis’s eyes lost the other-world radiance. “That is Tara, Mortal,” he said. “The Bright Palace. That is the world we are trying to save, and that is the world to which we must eventually return.”

  “I don’t understand any of this,” said Annabel.

  “You do not need to.”

  “Is there —” Annabel stopped. “Is there a way I could —”

  “Enter our world?”

  “Yes.”

  “Perhaps,” said Fael-Inis, but Taliesin saw that the remote look had returned, and he remembered that Calatin’s spell would protect only him, and that there were only seven days …

  He pushed the thought away and said, “Tell us of this world instead. The Drakon — the Disease —”

  Annabel turned back to him, and paused, because it would be very nearly impossible to describe to someone from that misty turquoise world, whose people would surely not understand about wars and international quarrels and power-hungry men, exactly what had gone wrong in Annabel’s own world. But because they were both waiting, she took a deep breath and did her best.

  “Nobody quite knows when it began,” she said. “Not really. And at this distance, it is difficult to know the sequence of events.” She looked at them, her expression serious.

  Fael-Inis said gently, “And perhaps because you had that access to the chronicles of your people, you have a better understanding,” and Annabel turned to him eagerly.

  “Yes! Yes, because you see, it all seems to have been mixed up together. The wars and the dreadful weapons that people were creating, and the freedom men and women had together.” She looked at them both, hoping they would understand. “I think,” said Annabel, slowly, “that it truly began in the twentieth century,” and paused, because for some reason it had always been very real and very near to her, that strange, hectic, brilliant time. “It is not so far back that we do not have the echoes still,” she explained. “Although for all that, it is history, of course. People still say, ‘Ah, the twentieth century,’ you know, and they always look dreadfully wistful. I think it must have been the most marvellous time to have lived,” said Annabel.

  “That is how long ago?” said Taliesin, trying to establish some kind of time-scale.

  But Annabel only said rather vaguely, “Well, about two hundred years,” and Taliesin said, “Oh. Oh, I see.” And waited for her to go on, because she had a remarkable way of bringing the strange lost centuries of this world alive.

  “We think it was towards the very end of that century that the Disease truly began,” said Annabel. “Or perhaps at the beginning of the next.” She glanced rather uncertainly at the two men. “You see, there had been freedom, that is, sexual freedom for everyone,” she said. “And from that, the Disease was somehow born. A terrible thing. People died in thousands, and it was so contagious that at its height they say people were afraid even to touch one another. We are still a little afraid now,” said Annabel, and remembered how these two had taken her hand, and how she had felt as if it was something she ought not to do.

  “Go on.”

  “Babies were born with the Disease,” said Annabel. “Poor, pitiful little creatures, already dying. It was hereditary, and it was so fierce. They say that people found to be tainted with it were isolated from those free of it. They were shut away in hospitals, all together, with food and drink passed to them through iron grilles.”

  Taliesin said softly, “How unbearably sad,” and Annabel looked at him gratefully, because she had always known this part of the Disease to be sad. To be shut away, confined, never let to see your family or friends, imprisoned with people who were dying as surely and as irrevocably as you were yourself. For there had been no cure …

  “I think it was the only way,” she said. And then, using a word unfamiliar to the other two, “Medication was given, of course. And there would have been comfort of a kind … They called it a Plague,” said Annabel, and looked up as Taliesin made an abrupt movement with one hand, and then was still. “But they were shut away together until they died.”

  Fael-Inis said, half to himself, “O, the pity of it, yet the pity of it.”

  “And so then,” said Annabel, “the Drakon came into being. It was a harsh and an unyielding force, but it was needed. Something was needed. By its severity, it managed to impose some kind of order.”

  “‘And out of chaos there came order,’” said Fael-Inis, and Annabel at once said, “Yes! Yes, you understand.” And smiled at them both, because in some incomprehensible way, they both seemed to understand.

  Fael-Inis said, “You must forgive our curiosity, Mortal. We mean no discourtesy. But perhaps we can help your world —”

  “Can you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Fael-Inis. “But we need to know as much as we can about your people. Tell us of the Drakon.”

  “The Drakon became a kind of figurehead for the people,” said Annabel. “There were meetings and public assemblies, and everyone went. In times of trouble, people look to strength.”

  There had been meetings and
rallying marches. People flocked to hear the words of the Drakon. It was said that when the Drakon spoke from a public place, or at a rally, the streets were deserted, for everyone drew so much hope and such strength from the speeches. The words and the edicts and the rallying calls became famous. They echoed down succeeding generations.

  “We shall fight this together, and we shall beat back the Plague and the sickness that has come upon us … Mankind is not so puny that it need submit to any kind of threat,” they had said. “The fight will be harsh, and many will perish, but the sacred flame that makes us better than animals can not be allowed to die.”

  The sacred flame of mankind … “People liked that,” said Annabel. “It — touched something in everyone.” She smiled. “And then, of course, there was the most famous of them all. I do not know where it came from, only that it was not the Drakon’s own creation. I think someone once wrote the words, and someone remembered them.” She paused, and Taliesin said, “Yes?”

  Annabel said softly, “‘This is the way the world ends … Not with a bang but a whimper.” She looked at them, her eyes dark with emotion. “Because the world was dying,” she said. “Inch by inch, painfully and slowly and unwillingly. But it was dying.”

  “With a whimper, not with a bang …”

  “Yes.” Annabel sat looking down at her folded hands. “Everyone knew it was happening.”

  “What happened?”

  “The governments did all they could. The Drakon did more,” said Annabel, and looked at them. “I do not like the

  Drakon,” she said. “I think no one likes it. But in those days, with the Disease at its height, it saved the world. It said the world should not die, not like this, with a whimper. If it had to die one day, then let it be with a final extravagant gesture; a last burst of energy and power that would echo throughout the ages.”

  “The Drakon did not stamp the Disease out altogether,” said Annabel quietly. “But somehow it halted it. By care and strict supervision, and by the dreadful harsh laws.”

  “People submitted to the laws?” said Taliesin, and Fael-Inis at once said, “Oh, yes. Oh, yes, I think they would have submitted.” And then, to Annabel, “For when you are faced with the world dying, you are prepared to do anything.”

  “They did it gladly,” whispered Annabel. “People embraced the new laws; they curbed their sexual appetites. The Disease was somehow halted.”

  Taliesin said, “But the Drakon had gained control by then,” and Annabel said at once, “Yes! Yes, that was exactly how it happened!”

  “A totalitarian state,” said Fael-Inis, using a word unfamiliar to Taliesin.

  Annabel smiled. “That is a word our ancestors used,” she said. “It is something they believed they had stamped out.”

  “Government of the people by the people for the people?”

  “Yes, but it did not work,” said Annabel. “Because there were always those who must have greater power.”

  “And where power corrupts, great power corrupts to a greater degree …

  “A very perceptive writer,” said Fael-Inis.

  Taliesin, who had been drinking a second mugful of coffee and finding it rather better the second time around, said, “I do not think I am following all of this.”

  “No, for the concept of such a world is alien to you,” said Fael-Inis, and Taliesin said, with his old mockery, “Dear me, you are becoming adept at this strange language,” And sent Annabel another of his grins.

  Fael-Inis regarded Taliesin thoughtfully, but he only said, “It is a courteous custom to try to use the manners of the people whose world you are visiting.”

  “I am rebuked,” said Taliesin at once. “Visit your wrath on me, and I will be humble.”

  “Will you?” said Annabel.

  “No, of course I will not.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  Fael-Inis was still seated entirely at ease on the soft-cushioned shape which Annabel had called a sofa. “Comfortable,” he had said. “You may have a harsh and bleak new world, Mortal, but you still have some softness left in it.”

  Annabel had been secretly rather pleased, because the sofa had been a shocking extravagance, and she had had to save her Pledges for six months, and then had had to wait another three before it could be brought to her apartment. But it had been such a truly beautiful colour — flame-orange-red — and it looked so marvellous against the whitewashed walls with the shelves for her books, and she had never really regretted it. And it was so good to hear someone admire it and to see someone enjoy sitting on it. She was just relaxing a little, and thinking that after all this queer adventure was not turning out to be nearly as disruptive as it might have done, when Fael-Inis said without warning, “And now, Annabel, tell us of the Doomsday Clock.”

  Annabel had, in fact, forgotten that she had mentioned this earlier on. She thought it just went to show that it was very easy for your tongue to run away with you when you were interested in something. She had been so interested in these two, and in the music Fael-Inis had played, and in the intriguing air of other-worlds that had hung about them, that she had forgotten about guarding everything she said. It just went to show.

  “I can’t tell you about it,” she said, and knew of course that she would tell them, because clearly you could tell them anything. “It’s meant to be a secret,” said Annabel, in the sort of voice that had already admitted that it was a ridiculous thing to try to keep secret.

  Taliesin said, “But you know of it.”

  “Because my work has been in the Institute of Knowledge.”

  “Because you stole down to the cellars and read about things you were not supposed to,” said Taliesin, and grinned.

  “I’d have been a very good spy,” said Annabel thoughtfully. “I didn’t get caught, you know. They didn’t even suspect. And it was all so very interesting.”

  “Tell us,” said Fael-Inis, and as Annabel looked at him, his eyes grew iridescent again. You can tell me anything, Mortal … Annabel stared at him, and thought all over again how extremely odd this all was. It was curiouser and curiouser.

  But she found herself drawing closer to them; she refilled the coffee mugs and rearranged herself on the hearth, because for some reason hearths were good places to be when there was a story to be told, and she thought that the art of storytelling must be being lost, slowly and surely, because people did not forgather in houses around hearths any more. And it would be a shame, thought Annabel hazily, to lose the art of story-telling, especially when so much else had already been lost. It was important to preserve mankind’s heritage, to hand on something to the generations that would survive the last days of civilisation. You had to believe that some people would survive, because if you lost your belief in continuity, you lost everything.

  Annabel was no longer aware of Fael-Inis’s eyes growing brighter and becoming larger, but when he said again, “Tell me of the Doomsday Clock, Mortal,” Annabel at once began to speak.

  And after all, it was quite easy to explain about the great clock that had been set up long ago, sometime in the twentieth century, somewhere deep in the heart of what people had called a neutral country. It had been in the days when mankind was beginning to experiment with the terrible weapons that their scientists and their learned men had forged, and it was in the years when people had become fascinated by the harnessing of the truly great and awesome forces that could be unleashed.

  “To begin with,” said Annabel, “they looked on it as a tremendous challenge, as something marvellous. That comes down very clearly indeed. They even joked about it. They called it a race, quite openly. The Arms Race.”

  “‘Arms’?” said Taliesin.

  “The weapons,” said Annabel. “The monsters that they themselves had created.” And she looked at them, to be sure they understood how truly mighty and extensive the weapons had been.

  Taliesin, whose mind had been running on the armoury of his own world, said, “But — could not the weapons be taken and
locked somewhere in safety? And guarded?” and Annabel, understanding that the blue and green forests that Fael-Inis had conjured up in her mind could not comprehend the forces created by her ancestors, said, “Oh, no. They were so vast, so far-reaching …” And seeing that he still did not understand, said, “The people of the day used to boast that they could blow up the world twenty times over,” and saw Taliesin’s eyes narrow in shocked comprehension. “And other countries had to match them,” said Annabel, “and not only match them, but go beyond them, and say, ‘Ah, but we can blow it up thirty times over.’”

  “How terrible. And how futile.”

  “Well,” said Annabel, who had often considered this, “the awful thing is that, if you think about it, it is understandable. It made them feel safe, you see. If your neighbour has a large stick with which he might attack you, or if he has a gun or a rifle or a bomb which he might use against you, you could only feel safe if you had a stick, a gun, a rifle, a bomb as well. And you would want it a bit bigger, just to be sure. If I was threatened,” said Annabel firmly, “I should want to be sure I could fight back. I was never in a war,” she said, “because we don’t have wars any longer,” and Taliesin smiled at the sudden wistful note. “But if I was,” said Annabel, “I’d be sure that my weapons were better than the other side.”

  “An admirable philosophy,” said Fael-Inis gravely.

  “We’re not supposed to approve of war any longer,” said Annabel. “The Drakon thinks it incites people to all manner of wickedness.” The grin flared briefly. “I wouldn’t mind a war,” said Annabel. “I’d fight if somebody threatened my home or my country.”

  “That is what wars should be about,” agreed Fael-Inis.

  “That’s what I think. But you see, they became frightened,” said Annabel, going back to her curled-up position on the hearthrug. “They became afraid of the — the monsters they had created. And although some people tried to pretend that the monsters did not exist, they all knew that they were there for always. You can’t uncreate a thing simply by pretending it hasn’t happened. The weapons had happened.