storm (12 page)

            Thiede had once said that the remnants of Ponclast's tribe might find enlightenment in the Forest of Gebaddon, but he'd never really cared about it.  He'd known he was strong enough to confine them and that was all that mattered.  If he ever thought about them in the years after the rout of Fulminir, it was only to consider briefly whether he should have had them slaughtered after all.  To be fair, he and his allies had had to witness firsthand the atrocities these hara had been capable of, and the only thing the victors had cared about in the aftermath of that trauma was ridding the world of such a degenerate strain immediately.  The defeated Varrs were beyond rehabilitation and couldn't even be domesticated.

            Because Swift had led the forces that conquered them, and because the typical Teraghast memory was very long and accurate, the name of Parasiel was a curse.  Even though the name had not been even been imagined by the time the last incantation had been uttered at the edge of Gebaddon, it had somehow found its way in through chinks and cracks, carried on the wind, in seeds, in dreams.  If you spat and hissed the word, it could have a very strong power of its own.  It was chanted often, in the hope that all the spite, hatred and resentment would somehow filter through the barrier that the Gelaming had constructed, fly across the landscape and reach into the heart of
We Dwell in Forever
like the black spores of disease.  Fortunately, the Parasilians had long forgotten their abandoned brothered, and as the best part of a curse is the victim knowing about it, the worst hexes simply slid off the barrier, or if they found their way through had transformed into nothing more than the whisper of a whining ghost by the time they reached Galhea.

Ponclast, the erstwhile lord of Fulminir had changed very much.  Perhaps some of those changes would have pleased Thiede, because Ponclast was no longer a har masquerading as a man.  He had slid into the darkest corners of his feminine aspects while maintaining the steely resolve of his masculine traits.  His body was long and thin, the skin very white.  His black hair hung down his back in a strangely glistening flag, as if it was wet, yet it rarely was.  He dressed in tattered robes of darkest crimson, but kept his fingernails very short and neat.  It was important to him, in spite of everything, to have clean hands.  Because he was har, he possessed a freakish kind of beauty, but it would never inspire poetry in another har's heart, even though it might arouse some exceedingly dark prayers.  He concealed himself, for the most part, in an underground lair which was his hive.  In this place, hara of the tribe came to him and learned about how harlings did not have to be conceived in love.  Ponclast, like a monstrous queen bee, was fecund.  Most harlings of the tribe came from his body.  There were very few moments when he was not with pearl and because he was so long and thin, the sight of him in this condition was not pleasant.  His children were like the bursting boils of his hatred.  They tumbled from him twisted up and snarling in their pearls, sustained, as was their hostling, by feelings of injustice and bitterness, which in Ponclast's case were very focused indeed.

            On the night when Calanthe had locked in psychic combat with Thiede, something had happened to the magical barrier surrounding Gebaddon.  It didn't break or fade; it remained as strong as ever, and in some areas became even stronger, but something leaked through it and slithered through the warped undergrowth of the forest.  It found its way to Ponclast, brooding as usual in a deep cave, where tree roots were like stalactites around him.  It came to him like a little bird and landed on his outstretched hand.  It was the ability to see through the veil.  It was Thiede's destruction and because Thiede had put so much of himself in Gebaddon to keep the exiles at bay, when he transcended the earthly realm, part of his essence went looking for a place to rest, a place called home, where it would feel comfortable.  It was unfortunate that Gebaddon was the nearest it could find.

            Ponclast felt knowledge enter him like a blade to the throat.  For some moments, he was held in stasis, in pain.  He witnessed and experienced firsthand some of Thiede's torment, fear and confusion, and didn't know what it was.  It could just have been another miserable torture conjured up by the poisoned soil of Gebaddon.  But when the sensations subsided and Ponclast lay heaving upon his throne of damp dark boughs, he knew.  Thiede was gone.  The barrier still stood, but the Teraghasts were somehow changed.  Ponclast knew that he might now find a way for a part of them, if only a small insubstantial part, to squeeze through the boundary.

            For weeks Ponclast worked in secret upon his plans, trying many, discarding all.  Some of his hara, lured in ignorance into his subterranean hive, died during the experiments.  He toyed with sending hara into trance, so that they believed they could pass like smoke through the barrier.  He performed dark rituals of Grissecon to invoke unmentionable forces into hara's bodies, which might find the barrier no more obstructive than mist.  None of these trials worked.  He needed something bigger, more daring.  And yet he knew he must be subtle.  If he acted too quickly or too rashly, the Gelaming would no doubt pick up psychically on his activities.  They would be alerted to his newfound freedom, albeit small, and would squash it swiftly.  Sometimes Ponclast wondered whether he was dreaming a cruel dream, and that the possibility of justice at last was an illusion.  He dreamed often of Terzian, had always done so.  In death, Terzian had transformed in Ponclast's mind into a shining angel.  Their past disagreements had been forgotten.  Terzian was a martyr, a dark saint.  He must be avenged.  And vengeance could not be taken in prison.

            During his experiments, with the smell of  blood and singed flesh around him as he meditated, Ponclast prayed so hard to the image of Terzian, he conjured a living thought that appeared to him as a flickering outline of radiance.  The tragedy of betrayal poured from this image, the treachery of sons.  Ponclast's son, Gahrazel, whom he had fathered in the days when he'd led the Varrs, was long dead.  Ponclast himself had ordered Gahrazel to be executed for treason.  It was not unreasonable to suppose that Terzian's son, equally traitorous, should suffer in a similar way.  When Ponclast, deep in trance, saw Terzian's beautiful image hanging before him in darkness, it seemed that Swift's name was upon his lips.  The House of Parasiel must be razed to the ground, its hara expunged without trace.  But how could Ponclast achieve this?  He was not mad, so under no delusion he had the power to affect outside reality in such a shattering way.  Not with the resources at his disposal.  Not yet.

            “Help me, beloved,” he said to the phantom of Terzian.  “Bring me aid.”  He cut his wrist and offered blood into a bowl of fire, then he sealed the wound.  “Bring it quickly.”  He worried that the Gelaming would somehow curb him before he could act.

            One night, weeks later, Terzian came to Ponclast in a dream.  He carried between his hands a window into the world beyond and through this window Ponclast perceived an astounding thing.  The reverberations of the event he witnessed were so strong they made the entire barrier around Gebaddon vibrate and resonate a thousand tones like the strings of untuned harps.  They made the barrier glow a deep reddish purple and any Teraghast hara unfortunate enough to be within fifty feet of it were thrown into convulsions.  Some of them choked on their own tongues.  Ponclast, however, writhing in sleep, saw a different kind of light.  He saw a soul comprised of colours the harish eye could not normally perceive.  He saw it streak like a comet through the layers of the universe until it splashed into the body of Caeru har Aralis and took possession of the newly formed pearl it found there.

            The image of Terzian said nothing, but Ponclast knew regardless that he was being shown this event for a reason.  This was no ordinary har that had been conceived.  It was, in some ways, an abomination, created too soon and in ignorance.  Ponclast thought that if Thiede had been in this place, his etheric servitors would have blocked the soul before it got within twenty layers of earthly reality.  They would have sent it back to the centre of creation, and Caeru would have woken the next morning with only a sore body and consuming nausea.  He would not have been with pearl.  But Thiede was gone, and his protégé, Pellaz, had acted imprudently.  He had called into being a kind of demon he lacked the strength or wisdom to control.  When hatched, this demon would want to take into itself all that was Thiede.  It would surpass in power any that had come before.  Gebaddon, to this being, would be a morsel to consume with relish.

            Now the image of Terzian spoke.  It said, "If you would take for yourself the power of the Aghama, destroy this pearl.  Have it brought to you and devour it.  Then will the House of Parasiel be given into your hands and your kingdom shall spread across the earth."

            Ponclast awoke with this prophecy ringing in his head.  He sat upright in his cold bed and stared into the darkness, where no shining spirit hung.  Even to a har such as Ponclast, who made the Kakkahaar Lianvis appear only as a benign trickster, the idea of ripping a pearl from its hosting and then devouring it was hardly a prospect to relish.  His mouth was rank with the taste of blood.  He cared nothing for the Aralisians, and in fact one of his dearest fantasies was to impale the entire family upon poles outside Phaonica, but he also knew that if he concurred with the suggestion that had seeped through to this world, he would be crossing a boundary he had never dared to cross before.  He would deliver himself to forces that previously even he had shunned.  He knew in his part that he was being offered a calling card from entities he had sensed, but never seen.  These beings, ancient and incomprehensible, lurked in the shadows of the ethers.  Their creatures fed on the basest of emotional energy.  Their concept of creation was destruction, and no living thing, of any plane of existence, possessed of the knowledge to control them.  But, if the correct offerings and compromises were made, these beings might well reward a lesser entity for service.

            "Yes," he said aloud, his breath steaming on the air.

            At once, it felt as if his throat was gripped by a giant invisible hand. 
Do you know us?

            The touch was icy, yet as hot as the core of the earth.  It reached inside him like an army of imps, examining every thought in his head.  "Help me," Ponclast gasped, "and I will serve you."

            We do not obey summons.  You did not call us, wretched hermaphroditus.  We summon you.

            "Yes," Ponclast wheezed.  His life was draining away, his body lifted up from the bed.

           
You will work for us, for it is time.  You have been chosen.  Work well, and there will be rewards.

            Ponclast felt he had nothing to lose.  He and his hara were living a half-life, in suffering.  They were no longer magnificent or powerful, but mean little phantoms grubbing away at toxic earth.  Given the right nourishment, the Teraghasts could become greater than the Varrs had ever been.  And if Ponclast had virtually to sell his soul to achieve it, then so be it.  "I will do as you ask, willingly and of my own volition."

            The unseen hand withdrew and Ponclast slumped back upon the bed.  He could perceive a small sphere of deepest black before him, which was visible even within the darkness of the cave.  Choose one of your children to be your champion.  Bring him to you and mingle your essence with his.  Through this, he will be given the gift of flight, the ability to travel the spirit paths between the worlds.  This is the first gift and will enable you to realize your first duty.  Destroy the child of light.

            "I will do this."

            Once he had spoken, the sphere of black light shot towards his body and enter it through the solar plexus.  There was a dull thud, a sense of being punched, like a stab wound, but nothing more.  The invisible presence vanished.  Ponclast was sweating from every pore.  His body shook as from the throes of deadly fever.  He crawled from his bed and drank water from a pool beneath the roots of the tree.  He lit some misshapen candles that lay in puddles of ancient grey wax.  Then he composed himself for trance.

            Ponclast extended his inner sight and cast it like a lurid beam over all of his children.  It swung this way and that, pausing to consider, to examine, before eventually moving on.  Ultimately, it came to rest upon a particular har, who had just killed a comrade in a moment of pure despair.  Ponclast's sight lingered over the har for some moments, then he sent forth a messenger, the hiss and scratch of his inner voice, and he called this son to him.