The Wraeththu Chronicles (42 page)

One day, I was playing at being a big, black animal in the green conservatory at the side of the house. Someone was paid to look after the plants there, but they did not seem to notice and continued to grow in unruly defiance all over the windows. The door to the garden could not be opened because vines had grown through the lock. It was one of my favorite haunts, a place where, when I was very little, Cobweb and I used to spend a lot of time together. The plants must have absorbed many secrets; Terzian hardly ever came there. But that day, he pushed open the window-door and Mood in the darkness of the room behind.

"Swift," he said. "Come . . . Swift, what are you doing?"

Guiltily I told the truth because I was too surprised to think of a suitable lie. "I'm a big, black animal," I said nervously, and I could see my father gritting his teeth.

"Yes, well, the time for games is over!" he said with his intimidating air of authority. "Really, Swift, at your age, you must begin to put aside these infant habits."

I picked myself up off the floor, brushed down my clothes and went to stare up into his face. I have heard people call him wickedly handsome, but how can wickedness be seen in a face that is usually so cold?

Although I was always conscious of displeasing him in many ways, I adored my father. Most of the time he paid me little attention, but when he did my whole world would light up with his special radiance. He was very different from me in ways I could not understand; there was something about him that made him seem very far away, but to me he was simply Magnificence Incarnate. I wanted him to like me. Most of the time, I was confident that he did. After all, Cobweb made a hundred mistakes every day that made Terzian angry and I had no doubt that my father was fond of him. I was canny enough to learn from Cobweb's errors. Terzian would never catch me making the secret signs, or talking to myself or watching the clouds; usually, I could sense his presence rooms away.

"Swift, I have chosen two hara to attend to your education," Terzian told me, drawing me into the dark room and closing the conservatory door. "The time has come for you to study properly, as befits a har of breeding."

"Yes, tiahaar," I said meekly. We rarely spoke to each other. Questions always died on my lips when he turned his eyes upon me.

He took me to another room, at the front of the house, where sunlight came in during the morning and the roofs of Galhea could be seen from the window. Two hara stood with their backs to the light, but I could still see their faces. One of them was smiling at me, one looked only at my father. The one who smiles will be the kindest, I thought, unconsciously shrinking back against my father's side, although I did not touch him.

"Moswell, Swithe, may I present my son Swift," Terzian announced grandly. I knew I was not at my cleanest and could feel my face uncontrollaby twisting into an idiotic grin. I wanted Cobweb. Swithe looked at me for the first time; he still did not smile.

"Lessons begin tomorrow," my father said.

Afterwards, I ran straight to Cobweb. I found him upstairs, in his own room, where the light fell in so pleasingly, and everything was comfortable. He was sitting at a table by the window, painting strange faces on porous paper with black ink. I just ran to him and threw my arms round his neck. "Swift, be careful!" he said, but he turned to take my face in his hands with inky fingers. I was distraught, but I didn't know why. Dimly, I thought my father wanted to take something away from me, change my existence, yet I couldn't see how. Secrets can never be kept from Cobweb; he does not need words.

"He wants you to learn things," he said gently, "that's all."

"Will things be different?"

"Different?" He absorbed my fears and contemplated them. "Sometimes, Swift, it is better that Terzian does not know exactly the way we think and feel. He finds you teachers; listen to what they say. They are probably wise in their own way, but do not take their words as Truth, just because they are older and wiser than you. Just listen, that's all."

I crawled onto his lap, although I was nearly too big for that. "Things will change; I

can smell it!" I said.

"Everything changes eventually," Cobweb said. "That's just the way of things. Not all

changes are bad."

Not all, but more than half. Cobweb neglected to mention that.

"My father rules Galhea," I said to Moswell. It was the first day of my official education and I had been roused from my bed earlier than was usual. Moswell and Swithe had both eaten with Cobweb and myself in the dining room, though my father had not been there.

"Terzian is a great har," Moswell said stiffly. "And you are a privileged little harling to have him as your father."

Moswell was scared of Terzian. It was not until much later in my life that I learned of my father's reputation as an enthusiastic and callous warmonger. I knew that he was a warrior when he wasn't with us in the house, but I didn't really know what that meant. It didn't concern me, so I just never thought about it. Questions like "Whom does he fight with?" and "Does he really kill people?" never crossed my mind. Terzian would disappear from the house for months at a time, and the house would feel different then, more relaxed, and let itself get rather more untidy. Then he would be back; the big front doors would be opened and in he would come with the cold air and a dozen other hara, all dressed in black leather and talking in gruff, grown-up voices. Sometimes he would be scarred; once above the left eye, which made Cobweb moody and short with him. At these times, home from the fighting, he and Cobweb would be at their closest. I did not understand the needs of adults, but was intrigued by their brief caresses and the different tone in their voices, the exaggerated grace of their bodies. Cobweb was rarely to be found in his own rooms when Terzian came home.

Moswell's task was to instruct me in the history of Wraeththu. It was the first time that I heard of men.

"Before the rise of Wraeththu, another race ruled the Earth," he said. "Humanity. As Wraeththu are called hara, they were called men." I was instilled thoroughly with the knowledge of man's intrinsic badness; his pointless aggression (Wraeththu aggression, of course, was never pointless), his short-sighted pillage of the world and more than this (horror of horrors), his two separate types. Moswell struggled grimly with the necessary delicacy to impart this information; not an easy task as I was (naturally) ignorant of Wraeththu sexuality at that age. Humanity had male and female, their bodies were sort of split. This made me feel cold. How could humanity ever have felt whole? Half their natures simply did not exist. I was not sure whether I believed what Moswell was telling me. It was an inconceivable idea. The first lesson was merely a glamorous alleluia on how wonderful Wraeththu were and how vulgar and vile men had been. None of it seemed real, or even relevant, to me. I had been born in Galhea, sheltered in my father's house; the outside world was a mystery I had no inclination to penetrate. "You are just young," Moswell intoned, noting my impatience and wavering attention. "But your father would have you know these things, so, uninteresting as they appear, you must commit them to memory."

Moswell did smile a lot, but this was merely to cover up a numbing tedium of manner. What he told me should have been exciting. Wraeththu, after all, were a comparatively new race and their escalation had been thrilling, the foundation of legend.

After the first lesson, I looked for Cobweb; he was in the garden. It was the time of year when spring begins to get warm.

"What are men?" I asked him. He was dressed in palest green, some Hunting stuff, and his hair was braided to his waist. His skin looked very luminous that day.

"I was once a man," he said.

"You were once a man?" I repeated slowly, unsure that this was not one of my hostling's oblique jokes. He sighed and touched my shoulder.

"Ah, Swift, I would protect you from all this if I could. I cannot even see the purpose for you knowing it yet, but Terzian . . ."

An eloquent pause. He led me into the greenest part of the garden, where there are few flowers and the shadows seem alive. Sometimes there are lizards there. Paving stones beneath our feet were viridian with old moss.

"You mature so quickly," Cobweb said and we sat down on a wooden bench, which would undoubtedly leave licheny stains on our clothes afterwards. "When I was your age . . . well, I was just a baby."

I snuggled up close against him. That way most fears would disappear, but I could feel an unnameable sadness within him and our fears mingled. "I was human . . ." he said.

"When? When? Was I there?"

He laughed and squeezed my shoulder. "You? No, no. If I was human I couldn't have been your hostling, could I?"

"Why not?"

He took me on his lap and stroked the hair from my eyes. "Why not? Well, because, long ago, when I wasn't Wraeththu, when I wasn't har, I was the half of human that can't bear children, harlings . . . oh, do you know what I'm talking about?"

"No ... I thought. . . what? What are you talking about?"

"It's so hard to explain." He sighed again and I pressed my head hard against his chest where I could sense his heart beating. "Swift," he said. "When Wraeththu began, we weren't born as hara like you. We came from human stock. We were mutated from human stock. I did not have a hostling like you. I had a mother; it's different. When I was sixteen years old, I became har. I was made har. That's when I stopped being a half and became a whole ..."

"I don't believe you," I said. Time before my own simply did not exist for me and I could not imagine Cobweb as anything but my father's consort, gracing Forever with beauty and being there for me to run to for comfort.

"If I was human and you a human child," he said, "then I would be your mother and that's all. But as I am har, it would be quite possible for Terzian to be your hostling and me your father."

"But you're not!"

"No, but I could be. Oh God, now is not the time, Swift. One day you'll understand. Just see it like this . . . oh, like what?" He laughed. "Later perhaps."

"What's 'mutate'?" I asked.

"Change," he answered, and I became alarmed.

"Change? Does changing mean you become something else?"

"Sometimes, but don't worry, you won't ever change physically the way I did. That's in the past now." He sighed again. "I'm not very good at explaining things, am I?"

"Not really," I agreed.

"Look at the animals," he said, pointing vaguely at the unseen birds twittering above our heads. "Terzian's dogs, your puppy Limba . . ." He looked at me strangely. "Men are like that."

"Like animals?"

"In many ways!"

"Did they have whiskers, tails and fur?" My mental image of mankind was becoming a purring, cozy thing. Cobweb laughed.

"You are too young," he said mysteriously, but he did not answer my question.

For several days after this, I became interested in the concept of male and female. Our cook Yarrow had a tabby cat named Mareta and apparently it was a female. Females are "shes," although we habitually called Mareta "he." I wandered around the kitchen driving the staff crazy, saying "She has she's kittens!" and considering myself worldly and clever. (Mareta watched me condescendingly from a cushion beside the

stove.) One day Ithiel, my father's equerry, was at the kitchen window, Inking a mug of ale, leaning on the sill, and he said, "She has her kittens, Swift, you little moonfly!" and everyone laughed at me. I never said it again after that, but mulled over the concept of "her" for half an hour afterwards, in my private den among the shrubbery, beyond the gray garden wall. "Her" sounded suspiciously like "har" to me; was there a connection?

About this time (a natural progression from what I had learned), I began to wonder where harlings came from. Cobweb told me that Terzian and he had made me, which was an intriguing idea. Had I been formed from mud and sticks in the garden, perfected by one of Cobweb's secret charms? I preferred to think that Terzian had climbed the highest tree and found me inside an egg in a bird's nest. I fantasized them carrying the egg carefully hack to the house (it would have been a moonless, windy night), and laying it gently on a fur rug before the great fire in the drawing room. Terzian, his chest swelling with the emotion of fatherly love, would have put his arm around Cobweb's shoulders and maybe even touched Cobweb's face with his mouth, which he did sometimes. Perhaps, creeping from the darkness outside, some little, furry men had pressed their whiskery noses up against the window to catch a glimpse of the infant as it hatched in the glow of the flames. They would have silently vowed me their king and would come hack some day to take me to their secret land.

I told Cobweb all this one evening as we sat in his room, with the curtains drawn against the night.

"Terzian would never climb a tree!" he said, riffling through piles of different-colored paper. "Here is a picture of you when you were very young." He handed it to me, and I put my head on one side and squinted my eyes.

"I don't like it!" I said.

Cobweb shrugged, "You are vain, Swift,"

"What's that?"

"You!"

"Oh, Cobweb!" I ran to him and squeezed him hard, so full of love for him that I felt sad.

Moswell bored me to tears. He droned on and on every morning about Wraeththu this and Wraeththu that; I never really listened to him. It was far more interesting to watch the way the light changed color as it came in Through the schoolroom window, dust motes dancing like insects upon the rays. My rangy hound Limba would lie against my legs and yawn, his yellow eyes appraising Moswell speculatively. Unfortunately, my father had trained him too well for his instincts to get the better of him. He would never bite Moswell, as I'm sure he longed to do. My tutor said that the world had once been full of people that had only wanted to take things away from each other. How could that be true?! Men were so bad, he said, and yet I secretly pitied them. I could vividly imagine shambling lines of pathetic, furry little creatures, leaving their homes with sorrowful backward glances, heading for the bleak north. That was when Moswell brought me books from my father's library and showed me the pictures of men. "Oh," I said, disappointed, "but they look just like us!"