The Wraeththu Chronicles

by Storm Constantine

  "Come downstairs," Swithe said. "Moswell is fretting."

  Later, I tried to apologize to my hostling for the dreadful thing that I had done, speaking the forbidden name, but he had only waved my apologies away with one quick movement. "I should never have spoken as I did," he said. "No wonder it gave you nightmares."

  "But are we safe?" I begged.

  "Yes, of course," Cobweb answered shortly.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Coming of Age

  Radiant angel; magnificent black hair

  Prostration at his feet

  Overwhelmed by the loveliest Har

  Under the concave firmament.

  Some weeks passed and then news arrived for my father from the north. There were cities there, Varr cities that had been seized from men. Varrs of high caste ruled in those places (of castes higher than my father's anyway), and sometimes their eyes wandered in the direction of Galhea and they would send emissaries down to see how things went with us. Terzian was never pleased about this.

  One morning, three polished black horses trotted out of the mist, past the follies, the fountains of Forever's gardens, up the drive to the great, white steps where my father's dogs leaped up and howled and bounded round the horses' legs. They had been riding through the night. The riders' garments of thick black leather and metal were glistening with dew. Cobweb said that northern Varrs were hardy to the point of masochism. I was in the hall when Ithiel strode into the house, when he went straight into Terzian's study without knocking. They left the door open and I could hear my father's abrupt noise of irritation when Ithiel said, "There are three of them. Ponclast has sent them." Ponclast was Nahir-Nuri, the most elevated of hara. Normally, his name was heard only in oaths; my father resented Ponclast's interest in his affairs.

  They were received in the red room that overlooked the lawns at the back of the house. It was the most uncomfortable room in Forever. I hung about by the door and one of them patted me on the head as he passed. Food was ordered, ale and sheh. I went into the kitchen where everyone was hurrying around looking harried. Limba was with me and he nearly made Yarrow trip over by getting under his feet. Yarrow boxed my ears and yelled at me to get the hell out of his kitchen. That was when Moswell put his nose around the door. I had hoped lessons would be forgotten for the day, but he dragged me off to the schoolroom and I did not see our visitors again until the end of the afternoon.

  That evening, my father, looking much relieved and uncommonly cheerful because of it, made an announcement at dinner. We were eating off the best silver because the northerners were there. "Swift," my father said, and I turned red because I was uneasy with strangers then. "Swift," he said, "I know you'll be pleased; Tiahaar Ponclast's son Gahrazel is coming here to Galhea to stay in the house, to study with you." He addressed his guests. "My son has often wanted company of his own age." (I mentioned it once, I thought angrily, just once!) If the northerners hadn't been there I would have asked, "But why?" However, paralyzed by everyone's attention upon me, I was too shy to speak. It had nothing to do with manners.

  Cobweb had a flinty look about him, caressing the smooth silver handle of his fork (maybe thinking it was a knife). He said in a clear, cool voice, "But why?"

  One of them, who had sleek black hair and the face of a hawk (his name, I think, was Mawn), said, "Compared to how you live here, it is no place for harlings in the north. Ponclast feels the situation up there might adversely affect Gahrazel's development. He has always admired Forever, and is aware of Terzian's excellent choice of tutors." If Mawn was aware of the veiled hostility in Cobweb's manner, he forgave him. Cobweb, because of his charm and his beauty, could get away with murder. Mawn smiled toothily at him, helplessly enthralled.

  "Swift's tutors are the best," my father said, rather unexpectedly. Cobweb looked at me and I could tell we were sharing the same thought. Ponclast's eyes in Galhea, in Forever, looking out from the face of his son. Cobweb smiled, partly because he saw in my recognition of that fact a developing maturity.

  Later, I heard them talking, Cobweb and my father. I lay in my bed and their voices reached me through my open door. Since the nightmare, I was too afraid to sleep with it closed. Cobweb spoke with sarcasm. "You seemed almost grateful and so pleasant!"

  My father answered irritably, "I have to be pleasant; we all have to be, damn them!"

  "He's had trouble with this Gahrazel, I feel," Cobweb said.

  "Who, Ponclast? Hmm, perhaps."

  "Why else send him away from home? You don't believe that fawning rubbish about Forever being so admirable, do you?"

  "He will be company for Swift. The child spends too much time alone."

  I lay there, listening, in two minds about whether I was pleased or not. New people meant changes; I would have to talk to Cobweb about it.

  The next day, all my hostling would say was, "It'll do you good, having someone else here your own age. Terzian is right, you live inside your own head too much!"

  Feeling betrayed, I went to look for Swithe and he said, "Cobweb is right. Anyway, it'll make lessons more interesting, won't it?"

  "Hrrmph," I consented glumly. "Anyway, what did they mean by it not being 'right' for harlings in the north?"

  Swithe looked perplexed. I sensed him carefully preparing an answer for me. "This country ... it is not ... a peaceful place, Swift."

  I must have looked completely blank. Galhea, after all, was very peaceful.

  "There are two kinds of darkness," Swithe continued, still struggling. "Remember them now, even if you don't really understand what I'm saying. One darkness is the natural kind, like when the sun goes down, what you find inside a locked cupboard or the deepest glade of a forest. The other, well, it is a darkness inside a person and it can eat them whole! It can eat entire cities away, until only dust and shadows are left. It is what men called evil and the darkness in the north can be like that."

  How could I understand his words? I couldn't; not then. But the feelings behind them struck deep. I never forgot them, nor how the room had seemed to chill as Swithe spoke, the sun beyond the windows to grow briefly shadowed.

  Gahrazel was about a year and a half older than me, but he could not write as neatly and was always horribly restless. He was deposited one morning, without ceremony, at the gates of Forever, and Cobweb and I watched his hunched figure, carrying a single, bulging bag, trudge wearily up the wide, graveled road to the house. "It seems they are glad to be rid of him," Cobweb remarked drily. I thought so too. Gahrazel had seen lighting, real fighting. He had seen hara die and had actually touched the dead body of a man. "I cut some of his hair off," he said confidentially. I showed him all the secret places in the garden, including

  the corner of the lake where the spirit lived, which Gahrazel appeared eager to invoke.

  "If I am to stay here, I suppose we must be friends," he said grudgingly, and went on to tell me how he would miss the hara he had known back home.

  Lessons were over for the day and in the garden it was becoming quite dark. Nearly all the leaves were gone from the trees now and we had to wear coats when we went outside. "This is a beautiful place," Gahrazel said, "there is nowhere like this where I come from."

  We had known each other only a week or so, yet already communicated in an unselfconscious manner. This was mainly because of the way Gahrazel was; spirited, confident and, to me, surprisingly mature. He had been sad to find himself in an unwelcome situation, but was prepared to make the best of it.

  "Why did your father send you away?" I ventured carefully and he snorted angrily.

  "Why?! You know what fathers are like," he answered scathingly.

  I did not want to appear ignorant so I said, "I know what mine is like," and we laughed.

  "I am near my time," Gahrazel told me. This was obviously something momentous.

  "Oh?" I said.

  "You know, Feybraiha, the coming of age."

  "Oh, yes . . ."

  "You don't know, do you!"

  I
shrugged helplessly.

  "There was . . . someone, someone a lot older than me. That was why Ponclast decided to bury me in the country. He disapproved of my choice, and I knew I would disapprove of his! Our tastes have never coincided. There was an argument, so" (he threw up his hands) "here I am!"

  Feybraiha: so, another new word for me to ponder. Was this another changing? If so, what? Pride prevented me from revealing my ignorance then, but something about it worried me deeply. A feeling of vibration; a sting. Presentiment perhaps?

  For the first few days, Gahrazel was sullen and uncooperative. I tried to imagine how I would feel if Terzian ever sent me away to live with strangers. I strained to be tolerant. Gahrazel disliked his room (one of the best in the house), complained the food tasted strange and was sarcastic to Cobweb. It infuriated him that Cobweb didn't get annoyed. On the third day he joined me in my lessons, and to my delight, contradicted Moswell constantly. "This har knows nothing. He is a fool," Gahrazel whispered to me. From that day forward, the most crucial aspects of my education came from him.

  Terzian gave Gahrazel a pony, solid and swift as my own, and we would often ride together, over the wide fields beyond the town and into the edges of the dark forests. My father did not approve of young harlings being out alone in the forest; stray men or hara of different, unfriendly tribes might lurk there, so either Moswell or Swithe would always accompany us. Gahrazel complained bitterly, once even to Terzian himself. "I go away for days by myself at home!" he said.

  My father smiled. "It is not my wish, Gahrazel, to deliver you back to your father in pieces, however unlikely that might seem to you."

  I had been brought up in Forever without ever feeling threatened by danger. I was not brave like Gahrazel, only ignorant. My father knew what lay beyond the fields of Galhea; I did not. Gahrazel knew too, to a degree, but it did not frighten him. In fact, he wasn't afraid of anything.

  One night, Gahrazel came to my room when everyone was asleep, and we climbed out of my window, down the creepers. Outside, everything looked white and ghostly beneath the light of a round, white moon. I was terrified of the dark places, rustling with shadows that might not just be shadows, but it was an exquisite fear. Under the trees, we looked back at the house, standing huge, silent and gray; moonlight made the windows shine. Gahrazel said, "Do you know all of that house?"

  I thought about it. "Well, no, I don't suppose I do," I replied, which seemed odd. It

  was my home after all.

  Gahrazel put his arm around me. "Soon, we'll both know all of the house," he said.

  And oh, how Gahrazel came to know the spirit of my father's house, what lurked in the shadows, much sooner than I did.

  At mid-winter, there is a festival. Mostly it is to celebrate and welcome in the new year, but Gahrazel said that it was just another thing that Wraeththu had stolen from man. "It was once a religious holiday for them," he said. We were with Swithe in the schoolroom. Swithe always listened patiently to Gahrazel.

  "In a way, I suppose it is for us too," he said. "A new year is a magic thing. We are still here and for the future, all things are possible. The rituals bring us together and it is good to have a time when hara can relax in each other's company and look forward to better things."

  Gahrazel cast a cynical eye at our tutor. "I would say it is only an excuse for too much drinking and eating. In my father's house I would imagine that the future is seen only as a ringing head in the morning."

  "You'll find it's different here," Swithe said gently and I noticed his pity of Gahrazel with amusement. Gahrazel turned his attention to me, his face brightening.

  "Once, I heard some hara of the Uigenna tribe actually ate a roasted man at Festival," he said.The weather gradually became colder, the days shorter, and one morning, when I woke up, the ground outside was frosted with snow. Festival was but two weeks away, and the house was warm and vibrant with preparation. Exalted citizens from Galhea had been invited up to Forever to eat with us on Festival day, and the house would be decorated with branches from the evergreens in the garden. Cobweb supervised the stocking-up of the larder with a cool, efficient air. Moswell and Swithe took a holiday to go back to visit their own tribe farther south, accompanied by an escort of Varrish warriors, should hostile tribes or stray humans be abroad, braving the weather. Gahrazel and I now had time to explore the upper regions of Forever, where I had never been before. Gahrazel was puzzled by this, but I explained that I had always preferred to roam outside. Forever was the warm place to run back to when I was hungry or tired; at the top of the house it was neither warm nor welcoming. We found a way into the attics and it seemed we were in a different place; a house that shared the same space as Forever, while at the same time being in another dimension. It was forgotten, crumbling, resentful. One day we took food with us and ventured further into the cobwebbed rooms and corridors than we had ever been before. I took Limba with me because it made me feel safer. Gahrazel was never scared. "A madman must have built this place!" he said excitedly.

  "Did men live here, do you think?" I asked in awe.

  "Of course," Gahrazel said condescendingly. "This house Forever is just another thing hara have taken from men. been called that. It was a man's town once." (I should have known that, I thought.)

  "Imagine," Gahrazel whispered, "imagine if we found men still living up here, if they had been here for years, eating rats and waiting . . ."

  I cried out and touched his arm. "They may want to kill us!"

  "They may want to eat us!" Gahrazel added with relish.

  is old; Wraeththu are not. Galhea too; it hasn't always

  We found no men, though. The attics were full of rubbish and treasures; a table whose legs were carved in the shape of hounds, a box of tarnished dress jewelery with half the paste stones missing, hampers of clothes that turned to dust when you touched them, bundles and bundles of papers and heavy, dark furniture with useless mirrors that I could not imagine ever having been downstairs, or even how anyone could have dragged it up there.

  We came upon a grimed window that looked out over a flat roof and Gahrazel forced it open. Limba leading excitedly, we climbed out into the frosty air and, sitting with our backs to the sloping eaves, unwrapped our parcels of bread and cheese and apples, staring out above the chimneys.

  "Swift, how old are you?" Gahrazel asked.

  "Oh, nearly six years old," I answered importantly.

  "Feybraiha is some way off for you then," he said. "Have they chosen for you yet?"

  "Chosen? What do you mean?" I asked, no longer embarrassed when Gahrazel knew something I didn't.

  "Someone for aruna. You know; the first time."

  "No, what's that?"

  Gahrazel looked at me queerly, then laughed. "You are nearly six. In as little time as a year you may. come of age, and you don't know what aruna is?"

  "No," I admitted sheepishly. It seemed, in comparison to Gahrazel, I knew next to nothing.

  "Then I'll tell you," he said gleefully.

  I could not believe it; I had known nothing about sex. Suddenly, it became all too clear what had occurred between Terzian and Cobweb to occasion my appearance in the world. Gahrazel asked me if I ever touched myself and when I looked blank, went on to explain in what way.

  "No!" I exclaimed, horrified. Could our bodies have this strange life, this strange need, of their own; something we had no control over?

  "All Wraeththu need aruna," Gahrazel said. "It is part of us; we are part of each other. I was told this long ago."

  I hated the thought of it. I had spent so much time alone in my short life that I was perhaps too modest. But this concept of aruna seemed so sordid; something messy, without order. Two hara coming together, with utter lack of privacy, invading each other's bodies in their most secret places. It reminded me, strangely, of cutting. I kept seeing huge hunks of raw meat slapping down on the kitchen table and the great, sharp knife that the cook would plunge into it.

  "It is supposed to be a won
derful thing," Gahrazel said earnestly, having grown up with the idea, but I was not convinced. I tried to imagine myself naked with Ithiel or Swithe and just the thought of it made me blush and I had to make a noise, like a growl in my throat, to make the thought go away.

  "How do you know when you come of age?" I asked, and Gahrazel wrinkled his nose.

  "I'm not exactly sure, but it's a kind of change, I think," he said.

  "I might have known; a change!" I cried.

  "Your father or your hostling will choose someone for you," Gahrazel said. "Someone has to teach you these things. It is usually one of their friends."

  "Ithiel?" I squeaked, appalled. It would have to be him; there was no one closer to my father.