The Wraeththu Chronicles (24 page)

"Cal is not like you!" I answered hotly. "He can't be mesmerised by anyone. He won't be sleeping until it's too late to wake up!"

"You shouldn't have left him last night."

"Why tell me this now?"

"Because I'm a double agent." He put his hands on my face. "I may be wrong, of course, but I know Terzian. He ensnares people. Locks them away in that metal heart."

I was filled with a cold, condensed kind of anger.

"You can't kill him," Cobweb said. His cool, light hands slipped over my shoulders, down my back. "I am the chalice in the waters of forgetful-ness."

"Perhaps you'd like to be!" I began to laugh. Cobweb had the power to make me forget. I couldn't see it. I should have searched the house, shouting, breaking the enchantment, but Cobweb made me forget. He was the web. He was the spider.

When evening came to draw its shades over the day, I wanted to go downstairs. Cobweb pushed me backwards, back onto the bed, laughing, smiling. His mouth was hot upon my skin and that room became the whole world again. I was hungry. We had eaten hardly anything since breakfast. He said he would go down later. There would be cold meat left from the evening meal. I wondered whether Cal and Terzian had sat, one on each side of the table, to eat that night. Did they talk together?

"Don't think about them," Cobweb whispered. Cobweb. My head was full of cobwebs. I should have gone down, fought the lethargy, thrown off Cobweb's spidery, wispy magic. But I could not leave him. He could not (would not) satisfy me. I wanted more and more and more. In the dimness, he became more beautiful, more full and the sensations he aroused in me were unimaginable.

In the night, as Cobweb lay curled against my side, breathing evenly in contented sleep, the door opened. I was still awake, having slept for most of the day. I saw Cal walk into the room, without furtiveness, unenchanted, totally alert. He stood at the bottom of the bed, arms folded and slowly shook his head at me. He was smiling in his usual careless way; there was nothing different about him. After a stunned second or two, I hurled back the covers and threw myself at him.

"Cal, are you alright? Are you?"

He held my shoulders, laughing. "Alright? What do you mean? Of course I am." He looked beyond me to Cobweb, who had awoken and was crouching like a cat amongst the wrinkled sheets

"Get back to your master," Cal chanted to him in a soft, chilling voice.

Cobweb's head went up. "You should not be here," he said.

"I am here though, now get out. You've done your part."

With dignity Cobweb hopped from the bed and went to the door. He had to get in one parting shot. "I don't know what you think you're doing Cal, but you won't get away that easily. And if you do, you'll be back some day."

Cal made a noise that was half growl, half laugh and raised his fist. Cobweb closed the door behind him.

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.

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 say 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."