The Wraeththu Chronicles (29 page)

Vaysh appeared at dinner, glacial and pale. "I hope the coffin we provided was comfortable enough to meet your requirements?" Phade joked and I began to laugh. Vaysh fixed him with a withering stare.

"It has become a custom of the Olopade, then, to bury their dead in four-poster beds?" he answered, but it was not meant to be funny.

Phade reached out and touched his white hand, which he snatched away instantly. "You really do ask for it, Vaysh," he said, "and what an effort it must be to keep this behavior up. Why not let your hair down for once? I promise not to tell Thiede."

I could tell Vaysh was confused, messing with his cutlery, eyes on the table.

"I don't know what you mean," he said stiffly.

Phade looked at me, and we both grinned. Because of the way he is, it is virtually impossible to resist the temptation to provoke Vaysh. You always long for a reaction. The chinks in his armor are well hidden, however. Only someone very clever or very familiar with him can find them. So Phade and I spent the evening meal slipping lines to each other and laughing at Vaysh's expense. I supposed he noticed it, but he did not care. Maddened by his aloofness, Phade's remarks became rather too brazen. I too began to speculate about what lay within the ice.

On the nature of Vaysh and other journeys

Tomorrow we would depart Phade's tower. Traveling; it seemed I spent so much of my time wandering around. Perhaps I would feel uncomfortable settling down in one place. Once settled, it might be that the past would come back to haunt me with greater strength. I felt as if something hung there in the back of my mind, waiting to tarnish whatever happiness I might find. Is it safer to be unhappy? Nothing ever wants to take that away.

After dinner, I excused myself and went alone to my room. From my window I could see the virgin whiteness rolling out toward a shrouded forest. Mountain peaks rose above it. Would we go that way? I would not be sorry to leave this land. I have always hated being cold, and willingly dropped back the heavy curtains to turn once more to the fire. Phade's servants had prepared me a bath, but the ante-room had no fire and I was reluctant to undress in there. So I changed into a thick night-shirt and sat watching the fire. My hands rested on the padded arms of the chair and I disorientated myself by staring at them. These were not the hands that had worked in the cable fields nor taken up the reins of a horse for the first time. These were not the hands that had rested upon the warmth of another; he that was Cal. Those hands were moldering somewhere in another country. Beneath the ground? Had he burned my remains? He believed me dead and perhaps I was. I did not know how Thiede had brought me back to the world, nor could I tell if I still looked the same. I could not remember! It might be that if I ever met Cal again, he would look at me with the eyes of a stranger. But I was Pellaz inside wasn't I? Confusion; everything was misting up. (This is the boundary; what is behind it does not concern you now. You belong on this side Pellaz . . .) Even the memories of my former life were beginning to become indistinct, especially those of before I was Har.

Faces were blurring; I could recall Mima only by her hair. I was suddenly terrified that even Cal would become erased from my thoughts. All the things I had learned, all the people I had met; so cherished. We need our memories; all of us. I dreaded that eventually Vaysh would become the only reality. Thiede's creature, my servitor and my guard. Oh, Orien had taught me well and I still remembered his words, those words that would never leave me: hide your tears, Pellaz. I have rarely gone against that advice, but that night I was alone, and the wind outside howled like a lost soul seeking warmth. No-one could hear me weep.

Vaysh woke me at dawn. He was already dressed to travel and carried a thick fur coat over his arm. I was glum and irritable as he supervised my dressing and made me eat an uninspiring breakfast of milk and oats. Perversely, at that moment I would not have cared if he had gone on without me. Let him take my place on the throne of Wraeththu. I would continue to molder away in Phade's tower, hating the cold in this frozen wilderness. (Was there ever a summer here?) More than this, I wanted to go back. I had dreamed of Saltrock the night before; a Saltrock of brighter colors, greater charm. In my dreams it had been Seel, not Cal, who had quickened with desire against me, but it had not spoiled the illusion.

"Hurry up, I want to get out of here!" said Vaysh.

I was pulling on my boots, sitting on the bed, hair in my eyes. I replied in the only fitting, possible way, "Oh, fuck off, Vaysh!" slowly and with venom. Vaysh blinked and flared his nostrils.

"We have work to do and quite some distance to cover," he said.

"I don't care!" I grumbled, pettishly.

"Are you always like this in the mornings, Pellaz?" A smile should have accompanied that remark, but when I looked up, Vaysh's face was expressionless, as usual. I wanted to make him angry.

"How much do you know about what. .. about what Thiede has done to me?" I asked. Vaysh turned away so that I could not see his face as he answered.

"How much? More than you ... maybe. Is it important? It's happened, hasn't it? Would you prefer to be dead?

A quick, cold anger flashed through me. I stood up and roughly grabbed Vaysh's shoulders. He tried to turn immediately; his hands came up and struck my wrists. I could almost feel his flesh crawling at my touch. "Don't!" he shouted and I let go. His eyes were dark with the anger I had yearned for.

"My mind ... I'm forgetting things," I told him. Emotions were pulsing in and out of his eyes as he struggled to control them.

"Forgetting things? What things?" he hissed and backed away about three steps, rubbing his shoulders. Even his own touch seemed repellent to him.

"Things that happened to me when I was alive!" I raved, and then, more soberly, "When I was alive before."

"Those things are not important," Vaysh said.

I could have struck him. "To you maybe not, but they are to me! I have to sleep, don't I? How can I sleep when my mind is draining away? Is it happening, is it really happening?!"

Vaysh stared at me impassively. "I don't have to tell you anything, Pellaz. I have only to deliver you to the right place in one piece. I don't give a damn what you think or what you feel... I don't give a damn about your precious, grovelling past. Don't you think that the only possible truth is that he's forgotten you already . . ."

He might have said more, but I could stem my rage no longer. In a second, Vaysh was looking up at me from the floor. He looked confused, perhaps wondering how he had got there, and touched his lip. My blow had split it.

"Now," I began patiently, "I can't make you concerned about me Vaysh; I don't want to, but I do want answers. Now, let's try again. Is my memory going?"

Vaysh stood up, the back of his hand to his mouth. He walked slowly to the fire and I gave him his dignity and remained quiet.

After a while he said, "I have something of yours," and left the room. Absurdly, I had begun to shake. It was rare that my temper erupted to violence and it always scared me a little when it did. Vaysh's teeth had marked my knuckles and if I was shaken, at least so was he.

When he returned, he held something out to me. "Take it," he said. It shone gold in the firelight, on a leather thong, worn with use. A sacred eye. I could not reach for it.

"How did you get that?" I asked in wonderment.

"It came with you ..."

With me? I stared at the pendant turning slowly on its thong. "Orien . . . it was Orien's. He gave it to me." Whether Vaysh knew of whom I was speaking, it was impossible to tell. He would not meet my eyes, nursing his cut lip with his tongue. I took the eye from him and it felt warm in my hands. How? How had this talisman made that impossible journey with me?

Vaysh answered my question. "Someone made that trinket truly yours. Thiede look it from around your throat. It made him uneasy; he did not want you to have it..."

"Why give it to you then?"

Vaysh shrugged and folded his arms. "Such a gift as that; even Thiede was wary of the charm. He gave it to me for safekeeping. I was told that if you ever asked for it, I was to give it back to you."

"But I didn't ask for it!" I protested.

"Didn't you?!

I put the talisman around my neck where it rested with familiar comfort. "This is my past," I said, and it was almost a question.

Vaysh's voice was dull, "Your past? It is all in there, perhaps. Your body In new; nothing of your old life is relevant to it. Why should it adhere to even Is that no longer concern it? The talisman will give it back to you; that is its only purpose."

"How?"

Again, he shrugged. "Only your friend Orien knows that."

My skin prickled. "Does that mean . . . does that mean that Orien knew?.'"

"Maybe," Vaysh replied with a sigh. "Thiede respects Orien. That should mean something."

"Vaysh, I want to know," I said. I went toward him and he backed away.

"Know? Know what?"

"Everything. How did Thiede do it? Where did this body come from? It looks like me doesn't it? It does look like me?"

"It looks like you," Vaysh answered, ignoring the first two questions. His voice sounded

less harsh.

"You've seen me before?"

"Yes. " He went over to the bed and started packing the clothes Phade had given me into bags. "Where, Vaysh?" He looked over his shoulder at me.

"Where have you seen me before?"

He turned back to the packing. "Everywhere Pellaz, everywhere. I have seen through Thiede's eyes . . ."

All the chill came back to my flesh; my hand curled around Orien's talisman. Thiede's eyes; my life a spectacle. I was staring at a heavy pewter jug that stood on a table by my bed. I was thinking of the weight of it in my hands and the impact of it against the back of Vaysh's bent head. I was thinking of me, fleeing the tower and running just anywhere; all of this. Luckily, I was not thinking hard enough.

Vaysh stood up. "We must leave," he said. "Are you ready?"

We looked at each other without liking. He knew that I had the power, even the desire, to kill him, but he also knew just what had made Thiede choose me. I closed my eyes so that I did not have to look at him. "I am ready," I said.

Outside, the sun shone hard on the unbearable whiteness of the snow.

Only the center of the yard had been cleared. Phade, muffled in a wolf-skin coat, stood rubbing his hands by our horses . I was now in a condition to fully appreciate what magnificent creatures they were. Slim, long noses, intelligent eyes, dainty feet. They were draped with red traveling rugs, tassels dangled from their bridles. They did not appear to be laden with many supplies, however.

Phade came over to clasp our hands. "It was a pleasure to meet you," he said to me.

"We may meet again," I replied.

"What? When you are king and summon me to your court as an underling?" he laughed. "Maybe.

Phade nodded good-humoredly and turned his attention to my companion. "Goodbye Vaysh, may your snow-lined knickers never melt!" He smacked Vaysh heartily on the backside as he was half over his horse. The animal jumped back with a start and Vaysh had to pull its mouth sharply just to stay aboard. He looked furious.

"See that, Pellaz?" Phade guffawed. "Emotion; pure and virgin loathing!" He laughed again and marched back to his tower, still waving at us.

We cantered out into the stinging, fresh air beyond the tower walls, heading toward the forest. I was wondering where we were going and how we were going to eat. We had brought nothing with us. Some three miles from the tower, beyond the lakeside town, Vaysh pulled his horse to a halt. We were on a snow-padded road, barely marked by tracks. Our voices seemed muted by the heavy clouds above.

"Why are we stopping?" I asked.

"I'm going to teach you how to ride that horse," Vaysh replied, deadpan as ever.

I laughed, "What?!"

"Just listen. You are riding a horse called Peridot. It is like no other horse you have ever ridden. Speak to it."

"Vaysh!"

"Just do it! Say Peridot and think the sound; like a calling."

"Peridot." I obediently sent out the name-shaped thought and felt it touch something disturbingly strange. The horse's head went up, its ears flicking back and forth. I had recoiled from the touch, but after the initial shock, tried again. My thoughts came to rest against an animal intelligence. It felt so different; frightening. The thought processes were so different. We made each other's acquaintance, Peridot and I. Animals do not look at the world like we do. It was a chastening experience to sense the way they do see things.

"We have to form a link," Vaysh continued. "I know the way we have to travel. We must communicate in the same manner for you to direct Peridot."

I did not welcome that. I expected Vaysh's mind to be a chilly, dark, inhospitable land.

"I like this as little as you do," he said frostily. "But you must trust me now, Take the information from me. Peridot is experienced in this method of travel; he will know what to do."

"Right," I muttered, cold inside my furs.