The Wraeththu Chronicles

by Storm Constantine

  Left alone, Cal and I embraced in silence. There were horrible words unspoken and I did not want to hear them. It was a crisis we had passed, that was all. There was no magic, no enchantments; just bodies and clever eyes, that was all. When I looked at Cal's face, his eyes were wet. Only two times, did I see that happen. This was the first.

  "We cannot stay here," he said.

  "No," I answered. My voice sounded as if it came from faraway; an insubstantial thread of sound. Cal let me go and sat down on the bed. He rested his elbows on his knees and put his face into his hands. His hair had grown longer since Saltrock; he had not bothered to cut it for a long time. Where it fell on either side of his bent head, I could see livid marks on his neck. My head went cold; loathsome, unwelcome pictures filled it. But I kneeled behind him and put my arms around his chest. I could feel him shaking. I did not know what to say. Outside, gray dawn started to creep up the sky.

  After a while, Cal stood up. He took my hand. "I'm going to take a bath. A long, hot one."

  "Shall I start getting the stuff ready?"

  He paused at the doorway to the bathroom, rubbing his neck. "Yes, OK."

  "Will we have any trouble?" I heard him turn on the taps.

  "No."

  I was anxious to know what had been going on, but also sensible enough to know I would have to wait.

  With some regret, I started hauling things out of the drawers and cupboards. Terzian had been generous. We would leave Galhea richer than we had found it. Curious. That statement works two ways. Maybe we should have left most of Terzian's gifts behind. Maybe not. We had a pack-horse now. Weight was no problem.

  We walked through the great, silent house and met no-one on the stairs, in the corridors. Outside, in the courtyard grayed by mist, Cal turned and looked up. He pointed. "That's Terzian's room," he said. The curtains were closed. Red, Splice and Tenka had been shorn of their winter coats.

  It took some time to find traveling rugs to fit them. The remainder of our belongings we found amongst bags of oats in an unoccupied stable. Everything was floury.

  We left Galhea and Terzian's big, white man-house. It was that easy. No-one came out of the house. No-one tried to stop us. The blank eyes of (he building watched us impassively; Terzian's curtains did not twitch. All the time I was expecting somebody to appear; either to impede our leaving or just to watch us, make sure that we did leave. Would Cobweb show himself at an upstairs window to wave or smile or glower at us? No-one did. Something had happened and our presence was no longer important. Terzian, blind in grief, rage or humiliation had turned his back on us

  The horses had been shod with iron and the sound of their hooves echoed too loudly as we trotted out of the yard. Once round the front of the house, we turned them onto the wet lawns and urged them into a canter. Clods of turf flew everywhere, awkward carrion birds flapped up from the dew, complaining hoarsely. When we reached the gates of the driveway, Cal turned left rather than right, which would have taken us into the town.

  "Where are we going?" I asked.

  "South." Cal kept Splice at a trot. He could not leave Galhea fast enough.

  "South? Again? But why?" Red was trying to go sideways, frisky, with a bellyful of oats.

  "It's the way to go."

  "The way to go for what?"

  "Immanion, maybe? Who cares!" He looked so angry, I let it go at that. He would not talk, his head haloed by a nimbus of quick, shallow breaths.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Release, resist; you 're on a leash

  At least if we traveled south again, I thought, to comfort myself, and kept traveling for long enough, we would out-distance the winter. Although the climate was not too harsh in that part of the world, it was very wet, and a misery if you were stuck on a horse all day. At mid-day, the skies opened. Rain slashed down with merciless gusto. We had to dismount and unpack the enveloping cloaks Lianvis had given us. The material had been treated (by some secret Kakkahaar process) to guarantee comfort to the wearer, be the weather hot, cold or wet. We did not want to sleep out in the open and kept riding until we reached one of the dead towns. It was hardly pleasant to stay there. The houses were mostly ruined inside, but we managed to find shelter. There were animals outside, we could hear them; quite large too by the sound of them.

  Neither of us went to look. Cal built a fire and unpacked some of what little food we had taken from Galhea. I hated the wall of silence he had put between us; it could mean so many things. Eventually, I could contain myself no longer.

  "Cal." I reached for his arm. "Tell me, tell me what happened." He put his hand over mine, carefully.

  "It's not that much," he said, but he would not look at me.

  "Is it bad?"

  "No, not bad."

  "Did he want to make you like Cobweb?" Cal looked up at me then. His face was strange and

  guarded in the meager light of the little fire.

  "Like Cobweb?" he laughed cruelly. "Cobweb's just a plaything to him. No, not even that . . . he's looking for something else."

  I could feel myself withdraw as if scalded or pressed with ice. "I see."

  "Do you?" He stared at me stonily. His hair was wild and matted, his eyes wide; he looked like a lion. "You don't see Pell. You can't. What I've seen, what I've known . . . maybe I'm the only person alive who has and that's it! And I really don't want to talk about it anymore, just now.

  I was horrified. It was like he was slipping away from me. "Cal," I said, questioning, sorrowful.

  "Oh, it's alright, Pell. It's alright." He forced a smile and rubbed his face with his hands. "We'll keep on going. We've learnt a few things, maybe. We're wiser, maybe. There's no harm done."

  For several days he said nothing more about it. We kept on going, as he said, killing small animals when we could for food. Luckily, because of the time of year, there was a lot of fruit around. Leftover cultivations in disappearing gardens raped by wilderness. Red ate too many green apples once, and I had to spend a whole night walking him round to ease his belly. The land around us was eerily deserted. We saw no-one. Nature crept back ncross the concrete at her own pace.

  One day, the sun shone a little brighter and the sky was clearer. The air smelled wonderful, full of mist and ripeness. Cal sang to me as we rode along. I told him he had a good voice. Then he said, "Pell, do you think we are in love?"

  I was so surprised by this that I felt color rise to my face.

  "Orien said there is only one kind of love," I said quickly. "And that is the universal kind. We love our race. Anything else is just a state of agreeable friendship colored over too hard by lust."

  Cal laughed, apparently oblivious of my discomfort. "Yes, that is Orien talking!"

  "Why did you ask me?" I feared for his mind.

  "Because ... oh because . . . look, I know they teach you at your inception that you should never lay claim over another emotionally. We are encouraged to be independent in that way, aren't we? Wraeththu must be free. We have examples to warn us. The history of Mankind; what they did in the name of love. It can make you kill; because love's shadow is jealousy. Men could not have one without the other. Can we? We claim to be free of such things, but are we?"

  Cal did not normally ask himself these kind of questions.

  "Cobweb said love existed ..." I said, not meaning to.

  Cal reined Splice in to a halt. "You've said it, Pell, that's it. The Varrs, what are they? Selfish killers, pillagers? To us, they appear to have deviated from the pure beliefs. They do not want to progress spiritually, they are content the way they are, but they do not deny love."

  "Don't you mean 'and they do not deny love'?" I added cynically.

  "Love itself is not a terrible thing," he said.

  "I know that. Orien knows that," I conceded, "but as you said, it has its shadows."

  "We must bring it into the light then, where shadows cannot exist."

  "This is all hypothetical," I pointed out.

  Cal laughed, "Look at me and sa
y that," he said. What I saw in his face almost frightened me; I could feel a frightening tide in my blood.

  "I cannot say that, you are right," I answered.

  "Then it must be true; we are in love."

  "If a name has to be put to it, I suppose we are," I said

  "Yes, I thought so. Then I made the right decision."

  I leapt off Red's back; he began to eat grass. "Cal, get down." He smiled at me. "I want to know what you're really talking about," I said.

  He swung one leg over Splice's lowered neck and slid to the ground beside me. We had been riding over wide, sprawling fields; there was no cover. In the distance, trees crept forward from the horizon.

  "We shall walk to the wood," Cal said, "and by the time we get there, you shall know everything."

  We walked side by side, the horses trailing behind.

  "You must have realized Terzian asked me to stay with him," Cal began.

  "I think so," I answered (untruthfully).

  "And you must have realized I was in two minds whether to leave or not. . ."

  "No! Were you?"

  His arm went around my shoulder. "Keep walking. Yes, I was. Terzian seduced me with the fire power of a volcano."

  "Yes," I agreed, cynically. "Cobweb said he could mesmerize people!"

  Cal gave me a dry look. "Oh, I expect he can, but it was nothing like that. Do you want to know?"

  "If you like."

  "Well, after you left us at the dinner table that night, he just came straight out with it. 'Cal,' he said, 'I want you to stay here.' 'But I am,' I replied. Then he told me. He had been watching me. He had seen no-one else like me. I was wary of the flattery, of course. It all seemed too glib. All his life, his Wraeththu life I might add, it appears Terzian has been waiting for someone like me. He said he wanted me to share his life, his powr and everything else; for ever. And he meant it, I have no doubt of that. It was all so serious; not just a seduction scene. I think it must have taken tremendous guts for him to say all that to me. He's proud, you know that, and rigidly contained. That kind of demonstration doesn't rest easily on him. We went to his room and for a whole day it was . . . just ... it was just. . . well, you know." (The immediate thought, what, better than me? sprang to my mind, but I would not say it.) "Terzian said, 'Cal, we can be great,' and I believed him. He was as fine as a panther. I was waiting for him to say something about going that one bit further, further than ever before. That was what we were expecting, wasn't it? All those shrouded conversations. I was dreading it, feeling him there, knowing he had the power to open me up, to touch the place that would open me up and plant his seed there. But he didn't. He must have been sure I would stay, otherwise ... when I think rationally about it, there was no reason on Earth why I should not have stayed with him; it is somebody's destiny after all. My dreams of Immanion are just that; dreams. What am I looking for? What was I looking for, way back, on the road, when Zack . . ." His face looked bleak; he turned to me. "I found something, didn't I, back then? The one thing that made me say no and turn my back on all that comfort, that easy way out of life. I would have missed it had I let it go, that something."

  He waited for me to ask, "Which is?"

  "You," he answered. "Simply you. That's what made me think."

  I smiled at him, although strangely, it was hard. "You know I would have been lost without you, Cal," I said, which was true in the literal and emotional sense. "Most probably dead within a week.

  "Most probably. Anyway, it's over now. How easy it is to say that. It was nothing, really; so quick. Now, I just feel one hell of a lot wiser. Some tilings I'm not ready for. Spawning brats is one of them; you know about that. But one day, when all this (and he flung his arm toward the sky), when all of this belongs to Wraeththu; Wraeththu building new cities here, sane people, not the crazy man-killers, there will come a time . . . God knows I want us still to be together then. If we are, we can begin new life with each other; I don't want to discover that without you."

  "That's quite a speech, Cal," I said, embarrassed, but not for him. Seel had once said to me (and it seemed so long ago); "Cal's so emotional, I sometimes think he's still half-human," and he was right. What he had not thought of, however, was that we were all still half-human. Perhaps our sons would be for ever. Not all of mankind had been bad. I think humanity's main downfall had been that they had just over-civilized themselves, and as a result, surrendered themselves to isolation. Lonely, solitary creatures trapped in the darkness of their own frightened minds, and cruel because they feared the dark. They forgot how to trust, be trustworthy and how to see beyond the mundane. Because of that, as they slipped further and further away from the Truth, some great thing, the thing they had simplified to God, had made Wraeththu happen. Mankind, you had your chance with the world and you failed. Now it is our turn. And to succeed where Man did not meant there could be no Varrs, no Uigenna, no cruelty. Since Saltrock, the Wraeththu tribes we had encountered did not inspire hope, but this was a big country and we had seen so little of it. One country in a big world.

  As we reached the shelter of the trees I asked, "Why are we going south again? Is there a reason?"

  "Oh yes," Cal replied. "Terzian told me that beyond the desert, much farther south than we've been, there may be a way to Immanion."

  "You still follow your dream then?" I pointed out, rather acidly.

  He laughed. "We have to go somewhere."

  "How can Terzian know of this?"

  "How indeed! Who cares? It'll be a hell of a lot warmer down there."

  I said, "You mentioned Zack back there. You never have done before."

  "Before…Don't try to draw me out on that subject, Pell. Let me forget that."

  The forest was a big one. Matted, heavily scented with evergreen resins; dark and haunted. But we were not afraid. Light folded down into the Earth; the forest vibrated with the sibilances of night. Absorbed as we were in a new process of discovery within our hearts, the darkness, creeping and rustling, could hold no terrors for us. We found a clearing and lit a fire. When Cal reached for me, he drew me toward him in spirit and mind as well as body. We were truly one creature, and fierce and terrible in the strength of that knowledge. His mind was a shining city for me to explore; even the shuttered doors seemed to whisper to me, "one day, one day." A lonely voice called at the end of the darkest avenue. If only it did not have to end. If only. The end. Cal. I was soaring like a bird, my nerves bursting with a sizzling, gunpowder radiance. Totally unafraid, elemental, letting go; experiencing the unspoken word, loving him. There blinked the half-closed eye of God. Ouana pressing against the seal to another cosmos. I could have opened up to that strange, new universe, could have. But he ended it there. In a sigh, in the night-time, in the dark, glowing together, by the dying light of the fire.

  I should have known. Perhaps I did. It was the last time.

  BOOK TWO

  CHAPTER ONE

  The thunderstruck tower

  I n the morning, we packed away our belongings, ready for the next day's ride in our journey south. A low breeze, tinged with the promise of ice, fretted the damp ashes of our fire. Daylight stripped the magic from the place where we had lain. The air was moist around us and we both felt sad. Cal held me in his arms beside the snorting horses. It was as if he knew our love was ephemeral. We had given it a name, a substance, and somehow, by doing that, we had condemned ourselves. We did not know the truth, not then, not for a long time, that we had never been alone. Forever at our heels, unseen eyes, all-seeing eyes. The gift of my inception. Cal had become too important to me. To the mind behind the eyes, I was no longer safe, no longer theirs alone.

  By mid-afternoon, the trees began to thin around us. Where the horses had once pushed breast-deep in thick foliage, they now trod a sandy soil. Leaves above us tapped to the rhythm of a fine rain. Between the leaves, the swaying black branches, we could see it: a village.

  Now is the difficult part. Now. I have thrown down my pen and picked it u
p again a hundred times. Even now it makes me feel sick and cold to think about it. I can remember the feelings, the smells, the sounds, everything. Just by closing my eyes I can bring it all back.

  There were no people there. No hara. Everything was still, under the whispering mist of the rain. It was an enchanted place, asleep, dreaming, red brick and lush greenness. A place waiting to fulfill its destiny; its one true purpose. Something made me say, "Cal, let me

  go first." My voice sounded slow and deep.

  He replied, sleepily, "There might be danger."

  I looked straight at him. "Might be . . ."

  Pain shadowed his eyes. It was impossible that we could not have known. We knew. Inevitability. It could not be fought. Our mood had become silent and somber as we had pushed through the trees, because we had felt it closing in around us. Fate. The great invisible hand. I made a clicking noise in my mouth and urged Red forward. My legs were frozen. His neck was up, ears flat. I did not look back, but I could feel Cal's eyes burning into my back.