The Wraeththu Chronicles (10 page)

Fists clenched in my lap, I launched into the attack. "Well, as you see, I am alive. Had they told you? I thought, perhaps, you'd left Saltrock." I had my back to him, but could vividly imagine his eyes rolling upward in exasperation. No reaction. I brought out the big guns. "Why are you here?"

"It's my room. While you were ill, I was sleeping elsewhere. I'm moving back in now, if you don't mind."

Well countered, I thought. His voice gave nothing away. I wondered how long he would wait. Was he ordered to produce results? He sauntered over to my window chair and flamboyantly threw himself down in it, steepling his hands, tapping his lips with his fingers, staring passively out at the yard below. I would have given anything for Thiede's talent of perception. Cal's thoughts were barred by stronger locks than I could break through. Huge, white moths batted moistly against the window, trying to reach the halo of my lamp, or the halo of Cal's bright hair. I wanted him to beat down my defenses, but guessed instinctively he never would. Cal was a great believer in letting other people take the initiative. He made them work for him, just conceited enough to know that they always would. (How could I have known that Cal's darker side went a lot deeper than mere conceit?) Sitting there, sparring and sniping and circling each other, we both knew what the score was. It was just a question of who would back down first. It might easily have gone on for days. I wanted to say, "Cal, look at me. I am har. I am one of you. We are equal, you cannot treat me as less." My mind was racing in the awkward silence. He would say nothing. I would have to provoke him again. "Cal," I began, and his eyes lashed up and caught me, calculating, without warmth, challenging. The merest implication of a smile hovered over his face. "Go on," he was thinking, "go on."

"I . . ," (Oh God, what?), "I still get tired easily. Thiede was here . . . I'm . . . well, goodnight." I could feel him studying me as I burrowed into the blankets, lying there, heart pounding, reciting childhood prayers; I think those few moments are among the worst I have ever lived through. Something hit my pillow, softly. Through slitted eyes I saw a single perfect crocus inches from my nose. Deep purple fading to lilac at the petals' tip, an aching yellow flame within its heart.

"Where did you get it?" I asked. No answer. Seel's flower garden, I thought. His ritual flowers. I felt Cal sit down heavily on the other side of the bed, humming quietly to himself; thuds as his boots hit the floor. I could not resist looking at him. He was lifting his loose white shirt over his head, brown skin and white linen, standing up to finish undressing. He had his back to me, stretching like a cat. All the Wraeththu things inside me that needed aruna were going berserk. He looked over his shoulder at me and I shut my eyes. I heard him laugh, quietly. My body felt uncomfortable. I wanted to run away. I wanted Cal. I could not cope. He could so easily have put me out of my misery with a single word of reassurance

When I could bear it no longer and looked at him again, he was lying beside me, some distance away, arms behind his head, just gazing at the ceiling.

"We were friends once," he said, conversationally.

"You didn't come . . ."

"I couldn't. You should know that."

"Why?"

I heard him sigh.

"Because ... I had my own rituals to go through."

"Cal."

He looked at me and laughed. "Oh, I know, I know. I'm sorry. Why do you make me so angry? I know. You make me feel inadequate, can you believe that?" I shook my head, confused. "Oh, God, you're incredible. I can't get used to having found you. Come here." He pulled my nightshirt over my head. "There, that's better. Skin to skin." His hands stroked my back, while I clung to him as usual, scared to move. "It is an enormous privilege to share breath, Pell," he told me. "You can even get power over someone that way."

"How?" I could only say the right things. He made it happen that way.

"Oh, like this." Now I was no longer Unhar, it was different. I could liis soul. I knew then that we had not shared breath before, no matter what he had told me that first night back on the cable farm. It had been nothing in comparison. Would it have poisoned me then if we had? "Even aruna is not quite like that," he said, "What do you think?" "What do you think!?" We laughed, hugging like children, sharing our breath again, getting mixed up in each other, like overlapping colors, tasting each other; his a taste of ripening corn and sunlight on fur. He pulled away to look at me.

"In the desert, I nearly killed you. I nearly jumped on you," he said. "You're exquisite. The crocus. Let me look at you; all of you." He tossed buck the bedclothes and cool air hit my skin with his eyes. "Thiede is Interested in you," he remarked. "He knows something about you. Too perfect. What are you?"

"Yours," I told him, making him laugh.

"Oh, I don't think so. But just for now I'll happily believe that." I asked him, "Cal, why have I done this? What made me do this? Was it Fate that I've become Wraeththu? Did I have a choice? Will I . . .?"

"Hush," he answered. "If there are a thousand reasons or only one, the outcome is the same."

"Is that an answer?!"

"Not really," he said, smiling. "Believe the answer is merely that I wanted you, that I bewitched you into coming with me. Perhaps you didn't have a choice . . ."

"Are you telling me the truth?"

"Perhaps." He laughed and folded his arms around me like wings. I never asked those questions again.

There is no coupling in eternity that can rival aruna. After a while we did not talk again; there was no need. Thoughts transferred between us like kisses. It was like dreaming and being in someone else's dream all at the same time. A star of pain inside me shot out light like a comet. It was a signal. His face was serious, but he did not speak, just culminated our foreplay by laying me back gently on the pillows. I was in agony, but for II while he did nothing, almost afraid. Feverishly, I reached for him, calling his name. End this torment. Dark flower. Touch. The star of pain fizzed wildly and went out. Tides of another ocean washed me delirious. Inside me, deep inside me, a nerve, a second heart, throbbed, itched, desperate to he stilled. Something snaked out from the heart of the flower and licked it like a bee's tongue. The heat of liquid fire engulfed us, sizzling our sweat and I cried out. Aruna. Ecstasy that can kill. The poison fire that is narcotic. I could never have imagined so much, The finest time of my life? There was something in what Seel had said. Later, others would bring sparks to my eyes, but that time, that first time ... I could speak of it forever and never fully convey the magic, the power, the union that makes us strong. Nothing like the affairs of men: it is quite different.

We recovered and Cal said, "Be ouana for me, Pell," shining, lazy, passive. We blazed again, and I bloomed within him. When the dawn came, we slept, but even in my dreams, it was the fires of aruna flaring and flickering, a dense inferno, the heart of the volcano, flowers and ashes.

On the learning of craft, and beyond sanctuary

My caste was Kaimana, my level Ara. The beginning. Kaimana progresses through three levels; Ara, Neoma and Brynie. Ara means altar and signifies a time of learning and preparation. I had many things to learn; basic occultism as I found out later. Its strange and lavish ritual intrigued me and I took the Oath that bound me to secrecy. There have been books based upon the codes of our religion. This is not one of them. As I speak to you directly through these pages, so I take heed of my vows. To those who already know the truth, there is no need for me to enlighten them. At that time, I had also to come to terms with the biology of my body, to understand its limitations and abilities. I learned to flex the muscles of my mind, so long unused.

Cal and I lived in Saltrock for about eighteen months and during that time I progressed from Ara to Neoma. Everything I learned came mainly from Orien, a patient and wise teacher. Seel taught me the mysteries and uses of plants (that knowledge was invaluable), whilst Cal, never less than that first time, explored with me the horizons of my sexuality. I suppose I was living in a kind of comfortable vacuum. Saltrock is cut off from the real world in a sense, if only by its location. Often, Wraeththu from other places would make their way there, some hideously scarred in mind and body by the wars and skirmishes beyond the mountains. One thing was clear: Wraeththu was becoming more powerful and Mankind responded valiantly to its threat, but the old world was disappearing fast.

We sometimes heard tales of the Gelaming; they that fought hardest of all and were rumored to have the most sophisticated technology known on Earth.

"At the beginning," Cal told me, "Gelaming were the finest, the brightest; in secret, so long ago. Men did not know about us then; that came later, with the killing. They may never know our true nature. (It was incredible to you too once, wasn't it?) They that joined us, the lucky ones, will be the only survivors."

Immanion reared, splendid and shining, somewhere faraway. One day, Cal vowed, we would find it. Saltrock, meantime, grew more solid, more stable with every day that passed. As Seel predicted, a generator was somehow procured and flickering electricity soon lit the lengthening streets and sturdier houses of the town. Saltrock would never be a proud and haughty temple city like Immanion, but it became a place, where even to this day, I could go to find peace and good company.

During that time I heard no more from Thiede. Sometimes, if I stopped to think about it, a threatening prickle of apprehension would scare me. Thiede had made no secret of his interest in me and he was stronger and more dangerous than we all knew. Several weeks after my Harhune, I was talking to Flick about Thiede's visit to my bedroom and how it had disturbed me. For a moment or two Flick looked at me as if I was mad

"You must have been hallucinating still," he said. I laughed, although a little annoyed that he did not believe me.

"It's true," I insisted. "Thiede did come to see me and he said strange tilings. I wasn't hallucinating. Mur was there as well."

"But, Pell," Flick replied, his voice beginning to falter with bewilderment. "We all saw it. The day after your Harhune. Thiede left Saltrock. Everyone turned out to see him go; he rode away on a great, white horse . . ."

"Then . . ." My skin freckled with goose-bumps and Flick rubbed his bare arms as if he were cold.

"Then . . . well, he is Nahir-Nuri. That's all there is to say."

Hut it was more than that. Thiede is a law unto himself. It is possible, though difficult, to handle him, but not an exercise I would recommend. At that time I looked on him as a kind of god, now I know better. He has his [Imitations; they are just farther than everybody else's.

One day, a young emaciated Har stumbled, half-dead, into Saltrock. His body was in an appalling state and those proficient in medicine were perplexed by its cause. Orien read the crystals to find the answer. Oh, the ways of Men. How they revel in destruction. Now they had discovered a Virus lethal to Wraeththu-kind and had lost no time in exploiting it. I was terrified. I thought it would be the end of everything.

Cal laughed at my fears. "It is a mere tick on the skin of Wraeththu," he professed.

I was amazed at his optimism. "How can we combat such a thing?" I argued.

"Simple," he told me. "Our strength can eradicate it easily."

We had to wait for the next full moon. A week and a half. During that time, ihreeharaof Saltrock fell sick with the killer virus. The carrier could not be saved; he was dead two days after his arrival, already two-thirds decomposed.

One day Cal said to me, "Tonight, Grissecon shall be performed. Then you shall see. There is nothing men can throw at us we cannot handle effectively."

He had taken me to the shores of the soda lake to tell me. Instinctively I knew there was something more.

"Why bring me here to tell me this?" I asked. He put his hands upon my shoulders.

"I'm not sure how you'll feel about this. It will be Seel and myself who will perform the Grissecon." For a moment I did not realize what he meant and stared blankly at him. "Pell, you would have to face this sooner or later. We cannot be selfish with each other. Here, in Saltrock, it is easy. Many hara are paired off... but this, this is different. Orien has told me it will have to be Seel's essences and mine. We are the only combination here that will work."

He did not know that I had been anticipating something like this happening for some time. Cal often expected me to react in a humanly jealous way to a lot of things. Probably because my temperament had made such an impact on him before my Harhune, in the desert, when he was still raw from what had happened in the North. I was different now; almost detached from emotional matters. I felt a lot for Cal and always will, but I was not possessive about him. Outside, a lot of Wraeththu have degenerated from the True Spirit, and are once again the prey of their own emotions. Thiede's blood ran in my veins, his words stamped indelibly in my head. Unbeknown to anyone, I was more Wraeththu than most, and my emotions were slave to me rather than the other way around. I put my arms round Cal's neck and kissed his cheek

"Your essence is healing," I told him. "I know you will destroy this curse." I could feel his relief like a golden rain in my eyes. I would watch him work magic with Seel and be proud. Grissecon, simply, is sex magic. Power is a natural result of aruna, which is normally wasted, dissipating into the air. Now I would have the opportunity of seeing this power harnessed, the potent essence of Seel and Cal combined, taken as a living force and directed back against those that cursed us. Somewhere, a resistant pocket of humankind had combined their own efforts in an attempt to destroy us, ignorant (as indeed I was at first) of Wraeththu's ability to fight back.