The Wraeththu Chronicles

by Storm Constantine

  Zaltana is made of creamy, peachy marble and stands upon the coast. Ferminfex was immediately impressed by the wonderful, perfumed air of the place; hanging gardens of riotous, exotic blooms flavored and colored the city streets. He was in awe of the grand, lazy grace of the soaring buildings and the languid, feline beauty of its people. Day after day, Ferminfex would sit in the great library of the Fanchon's palace, working at his papers. He had been given a blond, pinewood desk still smelling of the forest, and as he sat there sunlight would fall on his hands through the open windows. Pausing from his work now and again to drink citrus cordial or smoke a musky, greenleaf cigarette, he would gaze out of the window at the langourous activities of the Kalamah.

  In the late afternoons, before the early evening meal, the sons of the Fanchon would come to the tiled terrace beneath the library windows. They would sit on plump, tasseled cushions around their teacher who taught them to play strange, meowing music upon strangely clawed stringed instruments. Ferminfex would gaze down at them, as he took another drink, and be reminded of a pride of young lions from the land ofOlathe. They always had their cats with them, purring and chirruping in cal voices to their small, feline companions. Delightful, artless creatures they were, with tawny, streaky hair like manes, and slim, supple bodies. Lahela was the eldest of them, past Feybraiha but seemingly unattached, and of such loveliness that even the austere and normally unmovable Ferminfex could not help but fall desperately in love with him. Every day, while watching Lahela, he would put aside the dry, dusty business of praising the Fanchon's achievements, to write long, passion-laden poems instead; hymns to the Fanchon's eldest son. Occasionally, Lahela would glance up at the library window and smile at him. He was not a proud creature. Perhaps Ferminfex even let one or two of his desperate odes float down to the terrace below, who knows. Panthera didn't say. I like to think he did.

  The time came when the Fanchon asked Ferminfex to name his payment for the work he had completed. Without hesitation, the Ferike requested that he be given Lahela as his consort and be allowed to return with him to Jael. For a Ferike, this was not an unusual request; theirs is a tribe that often sells children to others who might want to improve their bloodlines. But it was not the custom in Zaltana. For a while, the Fanchon was quite taken aback, even affronted, by what he thought was Ferminfex's audacity Lahela himself solved the problem by telling his father he was wholly agreeable to the arrangement. They were bonded in blood without hardly ever having spoken a word to each other.

  "Romantic, isn't it," Panthera said, at the end of his tale, "and quite removed from what happened to me! My parents adore each other! True, the Jaels were annoyed by Lahela's Kalamah ways when he first came to Ferike, but I suppose they've got used to it now."

  "Your home is a happy one then?" I asked.

  "Very." Panthera frowned. His violation and degradation might offend that happiness.

  "So, you've spoken mainly of Jael," I said, too heartily, "what about how you came to be in Emunah? I presume your family didn't sell you to slavers."

  Panthera laughed. "No, but they were selling me in a way. That's what made it happen."

  "Oh?"

  "Yes. I was approaching my Feybraiha, you see, and they were all concerned about who would be 'the one' for me then, and all mixed up with that was Lahela thinking I should spend some time in Kalamah, because I was half-Kalamah, after all, and being cooped up in Ferike was denying me half my heritage, if not half my family. They came up with a cosy arrangement between them. The Fanchon had a spare cousin of mine knocking about who was quite a lot older than me but in need of a suitable consort. He was due to take over some far-flung Kalamah settlement on the Emunah border. Guess who was picked for him." I pointed at him silently. Panthera nodded. "Correct. Never mind the fact that I loved Ferike and didn't want to leave; that was irrelevant. 'Panthera, you will be more at home in Kalamah,' Lahela kept telling me. I knew he was wrong. I'm not that much like him; much more Ferike. I want cold and dark and trees all around me. I tried to protest but it was useless. Ferminfex said that I'd be able to come home whenever I wanted to; a chesna-bond was not imprisonment. 'Aghama willing, you may like each other,' he said, but I didn't hold out much hope. Cousin Namir. How I hated the name! To me it sounded cunning and sneaky. The name of a thief! "I can remember the day we set out from Jael so well. It was autumntide and very misty and dank, Ferike looking its best to see me off and make me feel worse. I was being accompanied by a guard of ten hara, all armed with Maudrah weapons, all capable of being competent and deadly, should the need arise. First we were going to Gimrah to pick up a present for the Fanchon, a group of racing-steeds. Then we'd take a ship from the coast of Gimrah, straight to Kalamah. The guards barely spoke to me. I was full of anger. Even more so when I discovered they weren't nearly so efficient as my parents had thought. Crossing the plains of Gimrah, we were overpowered by a large gang of Emunah slavers. It was over in a trice. Me and three others were carted off to Meris; the rest of my escort was dead. For weeks, I existed in a kind of stunned trance. Things like this just don't happen to sons of castlethanes, surely? But they do. No rescue. No respite. Dignity stripped away until all that's left is self-loathing. And there were no Feybraiha garlands for me either, oh no! By sheer luck, I think, I remained untouched until Jafit got me back to Thaine. Then I lost my virginity to a half-formed har who paid Jafit a lot of money for the privilege." He shook his head. "Vileness! Never again. Never. If my family searched for me, they found no clue to my whereabouts. No-one to tell them. No-one to care. The last three years have been more than hell for me, Cal. Much more. I'm not going back there. Ever. I'll die first. I mean that."

  "It's OK," I soothed, reaching to touch his hand. He pulled away from me.

  "No, it isn't OK!" he said angrily. "You know how aruna is so important for us! All that is just a dim, dark memory of a possibility for me. Anyway, you're so keen to interrogate me, what about yourself? What secrets are you hiding, Cal?"

  I don't think he expected me to answer truthfully. I shrugged. "I may not be safe anymore. Not out in the open."

  "Is that all you're going to say?"

  "It's all I can say. I don't feel anything yet, but I'm sure it will come. Fallsend was just a refuge. I could hide there, but not forever. There's no way I can hide out here; too big, too wide."

  Panthera looked puzzled by that answer. "Who's after you?" he asked.

  "I'm not sure. It could be one of several people. It could be many. I don't know."

  Panthera leaned toward me, searching my eyes, which he would find empty of clues. "What have you done, Cal? Why are you being followed?"

  I smiled. "Now, now, my pantherine, don't pry," I said lightly. "Have you considered that it might be because, not of what I've done in the past, but what they'd have me do in the future?"

  Panthera narrowed his eyes. "You speak in riddles. Why?"

  "To protect you. I don't want to involve anyone else."

  "That's an excuse!"

  "No, it's not."

  "You don't trust me. I told you everything."

  "It's not a question of trust, Panthera. Really it isn't. I can't explain. Please leave it be."

  He fell silent, moody because he had been denied something he wanted. We were sitting by an inadequate fire, both wary of pursuit. That night, we did not sleep.

  CHAPTER NINE

  In Hadassah

  "Reprieve the doomed devil—

  Has he not died enough?"

  —Robert Graves, A Jealous Man

  Of course, Seel is being very civilized about all this. There can't be many times he's had a houseguest go for the throat of his best friend, but Seel is, after all, a diplomat. Orien has gone home, nursing a bruised throat; Flick is hiding in the kitchens, very silently. "What do you know?" I say to Seel. Seel shrugs, lighting a cigarette. "Nothing, Cal, nothing. Have I ever lied to you?" He is testing our friendship. I would like to believe him. I would like to believe them all; they that claim to know n
othing about Pell's death. Do they really think I've forgotten Thiede came to Saltrock for Pell's inception? How did Thiede know . . . unless he was told?

  "You 're not well, Cal," Seel says to me. "You haven't been well for a long time, have you?"

  "Always so goddamn wise aren't you, Seel!" He smiles; tolerant. "Who knows you better than I, Cal?" Oh, he can look right through me to the black and rotten core, I'm sure. Now I will avoid his eyes.

  "Bed!" I say, standing up. It is late. There are wine bottles on the floor; 1 knock one over. Seel stoops to put it on the table; as he stands he lays his hand on my arm. "Alone," I say.

  "You sure?" I'm sure; there's no way I could sleep next to those eyes. He kisses me on the lips. "Sleep well, Cal. "

  Sleep? What's sleep? I grab two opened bottles of wine off the dresser on my way out of the room.

  My room is in darkness and I don't want to change that. I sit on the bed, drinking wine from the bottle. What the hell am I doing here? Saltrock can never be home to me now; too many memories. I drink, fumbling for a cigarette in the dark. Matches spill over the floor, the bed. Damn! Damn, damn, damn. I'm on the floor, grovelling, snatching at nothing. Then I'm curled up weeping; no violence, no punching the ground; just weeping. When someone comes into the room, I am beyond objecting. It feels as if I have no bones as they lay me on the bed. God, how I hate to cry. It hurts, contorts, makes me so vulnerable. Someone says, "There was nothing I could say, Cal. Truly, there was nothing." It is Orien. He's come back. He's come back because he cares. I look up, uncurl, at the sound of his voice.

  "God, how I want to believe you," I say. I am aware how I must look to him. Red eyes; childlike, helpless. He sits down on the bed, strokes my wet face.

  "Then do believe it. "

  "Oh, you knew, Orien; I'm convinced you did. Why didn't you warn us?"

  He never stops looking at me, yet there is no guilt, no furtiveness in his eyes. "There was no need," he says. "There was nothing I could tell Pell that he didn't know already. "

  "What do you mean?"

  "Just what I said. If he said nothing to you, that's not my fault. Or Seel's or Flick's or anybody else's . . . is it now."

  I want to say, don't you patronize me, but I just bury my face in the bedspread. Orien stands up to leave. I look up. He's standing there all lean and tawny and gentle; perfect Wraeththu. God, how I want to believe him; I can't stop thinking that. "Don't go," I say.

  He hesitates, looks once at the door. It is a long moment. He smiles into my eyes and it's a slow, sad smile. He pushes his hair back from his face. "If you need me, I'll stay," he says.

  "I need you." Come to me, Orien, come to me. Let me feel your warmth; penetrate my eternal cold. Please. Oh, I am so desperate; I want to melt. Is he surprised by my desire? Yes, he is. Maybe, he thinks it's irreverent because of my grief, but he complies all the same. Soothing, slow, languorous; that's Orien. A skilled lover. Afterwards, I sit up in bed to watch him fall asleep. One arm is thrown above his head; blankets thrown off to below his waist. He looks like the son of God. After a while I get out of bed and squat down in the corner of the room, still watching him. He barely moves; just the rise and fall of his chest. Moonlight is falling through the window to burn me, my knees hunched up nearly to my ears. I don't feel well. My insides are aching. The room is black and white; no color at all. How come I'm dressed like this, dressed to leave? I don't remember. How come my bag is packed and standing by the door? Have I been awake for a long time? Have I blacked out? How come there's a long-bladed knife in my hand? My hands are trembling; the sharpness catches the moonlight and shivers between my fingers. Slowly, I run the

  back of my left hand over the blade. So sharp. Hand to mouth; blood upon my tongue. Salt. Salt. I am not afraid of death. Are you, Orien? Are you afraid of death? He looks perfect. I standup; the room tumbles, bars of black and white across my face, my hands. Adepts fear nothing. If he wakes up he'll take the knife away from me, won't he? His eyes will command me. There's nothing to fear, but I must go on. I can't stop myself, you know, I really can't. It's the moonlight; must be. It's hypnotized me. All these black and white lines; they're driving right through me. Won't go away until I've made things balance. That moon out there, it looks like an eye. ( Why did he have to come back? Why?) I'm thinking of eyes even as I stand over him with the knife raised, but it's straight for the belly that I strike.

  Twisting, tearing; quick ruin. Up, beneath the ribs, through flesh and muscle, scraping bone. I feel it. I feel it. He gasps and his eyes flick open. He grabs my

  wrist; my hands are still around the knife-hilt protruding from his flesh, but his hold just slips away. I am already greasy with his blood. The blade has gone all the way in. I rip it out. He says nothing, just looks at me, his face bleached white, his hair, eyes and mouth deepest black. Maybe I should have obliterated his face; I couldn't. I just keep on stabbing, ripping into his belly until there is nothing left to stab. He never even tries to defend himself. Why? No, I don't care why. He could have warned us; he didn't. If we'd known, maybe Pell would be alive now. With me. A life for a life. That is the law. Nothing unfair about that, is there?

  I am warm with his blood and drag him from the house. Take him home. The temple, the Nayati. A fine surprise for the next blind worshippers. I hang him from the rafters by his own guts. My mind is blank; no feeling. It doesn 't hurt me to do this, doesn't sicken me; nothing. There is a red film of blood over his dead eyes; he will watch the moonlight through the long windows forever. Let him remember. Let him rue the day he kept silent.

  That's it. Nothing else. I steal a horse and leave, galloping north. By daylight, the lunatic remembers nothing.

  It is surprising how quickly you get to know people, traveling together on the road. I found Kruin mostly easygoing, although he does like to take control, which Panthera doesn't like at times. Panthera himself is an enigma to me. In Piristil, I'd categorized him to be someone very much like Cobweb; proud, vain and veering sharply toward the feminine. Out here in the wilds, he seems completely different; competent, sharp and helpful. He has also shown, in sometimes hair-raising circumstances, that he has no' fear whatsoever. He is frightened of nothing. Sometimes, this kind of thing can prove to be a disadvantage, like not being able to feel pain. It's convenient most of the time, but just occasionally it is extremely useful to feel the burn as you walk across hot coals; it preserves the flesh and bone of the feet! Sometimes, it is best to feel afraid. I've never been ashamed to admit when I've been frightened gutless.

  We often wonder whether Jafit has worked out which way we've come yet. None of us has dared to think he's given up the chase. It is deathly quiet

  in this landscape of snow; all the land is sleeping. We are following the river canyon east, climbing all the time. Our supplies are running low. Kruin urged the need for haste. We rest the horses as little as possible.

  Yesterday, we passed a small, snow-covered shrine nestling in a shallow hole in the rock face. There was a spring there, a wide, stone bowl, but the water was frozen. Kruin and I broke the ice and melted some of it in a saucepan over the fire. Our horses nosed dispiritedly through the snow, looking for something to eat. We'd had to be mean with their rations for some days now. One of them chewed bark off a tree.

  Panthera said, "Well, well, this is a shrine dedicated to the Aghama. I wonder what it's doing here, in the middle of nowhere?"

  An icy shudder, that was not caused by the weather, passed right through me.

  "Gelaming use this road sometimes," Kruin said. I couldn't help glancing nervously behind me, down river. Panthera must have noticed.

  "I doubt if they pass this way in winter," he said. "I expect they'll all stay comfortably in the sublime land of Almagabra, and I don't blame them!"

  "Not if someone is due for relief in one of the stations they occupy along the Natawni/Maudrah border," Kruin argued mildly.

  "They don't travel overland very often," I said.

  "This must be a sto
pping point then," Panthera decided, stroking the stone of the shrine.

  I shuddered again, not being able to imagine anything worse than a troupe of Gelaming materializing out of thin air at any time. Even Jafit and a horde of Mojags would be preferable. I was anxious to move on. Kruin and Panthera wanted to camp there for the night, as it was so sheltered. The rock wall on this side of the river was quite high and overhung with trees. I tried to argue with them but could give no good reason for my aversion. The rock protected us from the wind and it was doubtful anyone could sneak up on us unseen. It was eerily silent in that place; the river was frozen, its life hidden deep beneath the ice. As darkness fell, I wrapped myself in a blanket and climbed up the rock to survey the countryside. It was difficult to see anything.