The Wraeththu Chronicles (49 page)

He said, "I have sobered you!" and laughed.

"My father's sheh," I explained. "My friend Gahrazel has come of age and we were celebrating together."

"I see." He sat up and rubbed his face. "Be a friend to me, little monster, little reptile child, and bring me some of your stolen sheh."

"Alright," I said, and swung my legs over the edge of the bed.

"They lock me in," Cal said. "Lock the door behind you. The stairs are very steep and oblivion is heaven to me at the moment."

Strange he should say that when we both knew he would never kill himself. I smiled uncertainly, pausing at the door. "Cal," I said, and his name felt strange in my mouth. "Why were you afraid of me?"

"I told you," he answered. "You're a monster; you shouldn't exist. Men can't bear children, it's not possible."

"But we're not men!" I protested.

"Aren't we? Sometimes I wonder," Cal said.

I went to fetch the sheh and Gahrazel, reassured that Cal wasn't about to attack us, insisted on coming back with me. I was afraid Terzian would find out, convinced he would be angry. Gahrazel and I sat on Cal's bed and watched him gulp down the sheh, holding the glass with shaking hands.

"Aren't you bored?" Gahrazel asked.

Cal screwed up his face. "Bored? I can't feel anything. Only the evidence of my eyes persuades me that, in fact, I possess arms and legs." He held out his glass and I filled it dutifully. "This will make me sleep," he said. "The little death."

"Cal thinks we are monsters," I remarked to Gahrazel.

"My father thinks that too," he replied. "He often called me a little monster."

"Varrish brats," Cal said good-naturedly.

When Cal got sleepy, Gahrazel and I went back to Gahrazel's room. "He doesn't seem evil," my friend said thoughtfully. "Only rather pathetic, rather hopeless." I could say nothing. I was no longer sure of what I thought about Cal.

Gahrazel's coming of age was now just a week away, my birthday but two days. Terzian told Gahrazel to cut his hair, but Gahrazel told me he had no intention of doing any such thing. Among Varrs, only those hara whose life-work has been designated as hostlings wear their hair very long. Later, I learned that this was seen as a sign of femininity. Like men, Wraeththu want the bodies that carry their children to be lovely. What I did not know then was that among other tribes, all hara are considered equally masculine and feminine; anyone can host a pearl and it does not matter how you dress or how long your hair is or whether you're a soldier or a clothmaker. To a man, someone like Cobweb might appear superficially female, because that side of his nature has been unnaturally encouraged. Terzian was obviously worried that Ponclast's son might be too feminine. Ponclast wanted to breed warriors, not hostlings. Gahrazel and I discussed this and, of course, his disregard for authority meant that his hair stayed long.

Messengers came frequently from the north now and sometimes they would bring a letter for Gahrazel from his father. I began to sense something huge, an uprising, great activity, in the world beyond Galhea's fields. Terzian would sit at mealtimes with a frown on his face, ploughing his food with his fork. I think Cobweb was almost disappointed that the arrival of Cal had prompted no dramatic change in our lives. Now he had nothing to complain about. Naturally, I had told him what I had witnessed in the conservatory and this had made him smile.

One day, I said to my father, "What is happening in the world?" We were in the stables. One of Terzian's horses had gone lame and he was supervising the application of poultices.

"Rumors, rumors," Terzian replied vaguely and I knew he could not be bothered to tell me.

"What rumors?" I insisted.

"Rumors that Thiede is becoming active," he said.

"What's Thiede?"

"Not a what, a who," he said. "And a very dangerous who at that. Of another tribe; Gelaming."

"Oh, Gelaming," I said, remembering the incident with Moswell and Cobweb the year before. "Will they come to fight you?"

My father laughed. "It is suspected that they covet this land. There is a possibility we may have to fight to keep it."

"Oh," I said. I was used to my father disappearing and I had a vague idea what he got up to on those occasions, so I was not unduly alarmed. To me, he was omnipotent. I could not imagine him ever being beaten.

"I understand you've been to see Cal," Terzian said carelessly, but I could sense the slight tension in his voice.

"Sometimes," I admitted. "He's strange." Terzian did not comment on this.

"I think perhaps he is well enough to eat with the rest of us now," he said carefully. "Perhaps it would be better if you informed Cobweb of this."

As I grew older, I discovered I had a new role in life; that of intermediary between my parents. I realized that, although Terzian considered Cobweb to be alive solely for his personal use, he was also slightly afraid of him. Cobweb lived in a strange, magical world, but because he believed in it, the strangeness became power. When Cobweb became angry, he was a thing to be feared, because his power was invisible. I told him what Terzian had said and he smiled fiercely and said, "I see." That was all. I dared not tell him that I sometimes went to visit Cal in his room, but it was more than likely that Cobweb knew about that already. Because of his art, it was virtually impossible to keep secrets from him. I was torn two ways. Curiosity, and loyalty to Terzian pulled me one way, devotion to my hostling the other. Whomever I sided with, there would be unpleasantness. Cobweb and I had always been close, now he was reserved with me. I had a suspicion that the friendship with Swithe had been resumed as well, but I could not be sure.

Our first meal with Cal was a nightmare. If I thought the atmosphere had ever been bad before, I was now horribly enlightened. Cal, with a definite air of self-preservation, treated Cobweb's hostility with light amusement. I cringed when he had the nerve to say, "Well Cobweb, you've certainly changed since we last met. You're quite stunning now, aren't you! How lucky that injury to your leg didn't leave you with a limp. Did it scar? I seem to remember that the last words you said to me were something like, 'You'll be back some day.' I never thought you'd be right. Here's to your gift of intuition!" And he raised his glass, sipped daintily. If Cobweb had been a cat, he would have fluffed up his fur to twice his normal size, but he was har and therefore only simmered silently with rage. Gahrazel and I dared not look at each other, for fear of giggling. My father had a tight, uncomfortable expression on his face as he stared at his plate.

That was perhaps the only reference Cal had made to his past. I noticed that his hands still shook, although he tried to hide it, and his eyes were still shadowed, but he was no longer locked in his room at night. I wondered what had transpired between Cal and Terzian that my father should no longer worry about Cal trying to leave. It was hard to imagine them actually talking to each other.

I had got into the habit of seeking Cal's company virtually every day. He fascinated me so much, I couldn't keep away. I never got the impression that he didn't want me around, but at the same time he never said anything , important to me. He asked me questions about myself and my family and his mordant sense of humor always made me laugh, but he never talked about himself. It wasn't that he was being secretive, it was more as if his life had only really begun once he had woken up in Forever. It didn't seem as if he was interested in what had happened to him before. He would never stare out of the window with a faraway look on his face, or stop talking as if a memory had walked across his eyes. His whole existence was simply "now." This irked me because my curiosity about his past was overwhelming. I wanted to know why he had left Terzian before, what had happened to Pellaz and, more than either of those things, why he had come back. He had evaded that question once, and I didn't believe the answer he had given me then. Was he evil? Sometimes I was troubled by my fascination for him. Alone, at night, I was often afraid of him, but I was always drawn back, for I had met no-one like him before. Each time we met it was as if I learned something new about

the world that would never be put into words. It was as if I was learning his secrets, not through concrete ideas, but just from feelings that were nearly smells and sounds and tastes. On several occasions, after I had left him, fleeting pictures would flash across my inner eye, like memories, but they were of places and people I had never seen.

I once remarked upon Cobweb's hostility toward him and Cal laughed and said, "He is lovely now. Who would have thought it!"

"He will never like you," I said swiftly. Cal ignored this.

"I would like," he said wistfully, "to bind him naked with green, shining ropes of ivy and cover him with kisses."

I went cold, a strange, numb feeling. "More than you would like to touch my father's hand?" I snapped, a question which had come out before I could think better of it. Cal looked at me startled for a second, then he made a noise of amusement, as if at a private joke.

"In dreams, Terzian and I may be together. Is that what you wanted to know?"

Heat suffused my face; I could not look at him.

"If you want more of an explanation," he continued, "then let me say that reality may make me come alive, and I fear life. Can you understand that?"

It was the first time he had ever spoken to me like this, and I was unsure of his motive. "Do you mean that aruna may make you remember?" I asked cautiously, hating the feel of that word on my lips. Would he answer me? Cal wrinkled his brow and twisted his mouth to the side as he considered what I'd said. He did not appear embarrassed and chose not to show me he knew that I was.

"Aruna will open up all the blocked circuits in my head, I'm sure of it," he said. "It's an electric thing, after all."

"But can you live forever like this, now knowing?"

He shrugged. "I never think about it."

I wondered if that was true.

I was given gifts on my birthday, small things, and Cobweb and I had a small party with Swithe, Moswell and Gahrazel. My father was away for the day and Cal kept to his room. I knew he had started to write, but he kept the subject a secret. He spent most of his time writing now. Later, when it began to get dark, Ithiel joined us in the drawing room and Cobweb mixed us drinks of sheh and herbs and piquant essences. We all got happily drunk. Moswell, in a rare mood of abandonment, stood up and capered and sang. Everyone laughed till it hurt. I was sure that Cal would be able to hear us in his room. Did he throw down his pen in annoyance or think wistfully, If I was with them . . .

The day of Gahrazel's Feybraiha arrived; a sunlit morning, where yellow flowers glowed brighter than ever before under the trees and young leaves of an acid green color filtered all the light and made the garden secret and exciting. As Varrs don't hold much with religion and ceremony, Gahrazel had neither to fast nor pray. I understood from Swithe that in other tribes, Feybraiha was surrounded by ritual and meant a lot more than just losing your virginity. Cobweb plaited flowers into Gahrazel's hair and Terzian invited friends and officers of his guard to share our meal at lunchtime. The table was strewn with greenery; hara murmured in Ithiel's ear and laughed. Clear sunlight streamed in from the garden, making the curtains look transparent at the edges and spinning magic gold in Cal's glorious hair, where he sat with his back to the light. Cobweb forgot to be angry that Cal was there and I saw Terzian take Cobweb's hand and they looked into each other's eyes, smiling, half ashamed. I could

not tell what Cal was thinking, watching them. He had a faint smile on his face and drank wine at a steady but consistent pace. Terzian made a speech and congratulated Gahrazel on reaching the lofty state of adult. "Today, you are no longer harling. Today you have a caste. I pronounce you of caste Kaimana. Your level is the first of that caste; it is Ara. You are Aralid, Gahrazel."

In the evening, much to everyone's surprise (and I'm sure, Gahrazel's horror), Ponclast arrived from the north. Terzian and he embraced and slapped each other's backs.

"My little Gahrazel is no more!" Ponclast boomed. He was a big har, though not fleshy, and had short, dense black hair, like fur. His nose was the fiercest I had ever seen and his eyes could have seen through steel. It was clear that, like my father, he made no concessions to the feminine side of his nature. "So you are the one!" he exclaimed to a white-faced Ithiel. "Take care of him!"

When Terzian introduced him to me, he picked me up bodily and shook me as a dog would do with a rat. "Fair of face, as both his parents!" he shouted, close to my ear.

We had music and dancing in the big room. My father persuaded Cal to dance with him (which embarrassed me), and at the end they hugged each other. Cobweb hissed at my side.

Then the time came for Gahrazel and Ithiel to leave us and repair to the room that Cobweb and the house-hara had strewn with grasses and flowers. My heart was thudding so, it was almost as if it were me who would walk up those stairs with Ithiel, not Gahrazel. He came over to me and we pressed our faces together, cheek to cheek. I could smell sandalwood and fear.

"It's almost like goodbye," I said, surprised to find my voice was shaking. "You are leaving me behind."

"No," Gahrazel said. "No, Swift."

I could not imagine that one day, a celebration like this would be held in honor of my Feybraiha. On that day, my body would come alive. Another har would touch me and nothing about me would be private any more. I knew that aruna was more than just a communion of bodies; my mind as well as my flesh would have to be surrendered.