The Wraeththu Chronicles (54 page)

I was crying; I couldn't help it. I screamed, "Cobweb! Cobweb!" helplessly, impotently.

My hostling did not even look at me. His voice was hoarse, his clothes, his hair

seemed to billow around him. "Know yourself, Cal!" he snarled. "Know yourself! You are

evil and death, the lord of lies!"

Cal twitched as if the lightning had coursed right into him. His face was the face of

a demon, twisted, gaping. Through the glass above, the sky crawled with fingers of

light.

"Go to the elements!" Cobweb screamed and Cal was blown past me, a scrap of flesh, light as air, into the rain, into the thunder, and my hostling laughed. "Not even all the hosts of Heaven can save him from himself!"

I heard it in my head as I ran out into the rain. Whether Cobweb had actually spoken it, I could not be sure.

Lightning had carved a great, seeping, pale gash in one of the gnarled yew trees by the lake. Perhaps at the same moment as the lightning struck, Cal's shuttered mind had opened up to him. I walked to the water and looked around me, still sobbing, tears and rain on my face. I was dazed, unsure of what had happened except that Cobweb's insane

jealousy had been appeased. I called Cal's name, not really expecting an answer. Thunder was my only reply. I was soaked to the skin, my hair flat to my head. Cobweb would wait in the summerhouse until the rain stopped.

I kneeled in the soft, damp earth at the water's edge. Last year's dead reeds had not yet been cleared away. Among the stronger, greener shafts they juddered beneath the firing-squad bullets of the rain. I looked across the water, toward the half-tumbled temple folly that nestled into the trees on the other side. I could see a patch of white there. Before I realized what I was doing, I had started wading out into the water, mud and reeds swallowing my legs. Splashing, panicking, I turned round, waded back and scrambled round the sucking banks toward the stones.

He lay among the gray, licheny rocks as if he had been thrown there, his shirt torn off, his skin filthy with leaf mold and dirt, scratched and bleeding. I hurled myself toward him, wrenching my ankle, feeling the arrow of pain shoot up my leg. "Cal!" It was a scream.

He moved feebly. He curled away from me and put his arms around his head. I was so relieved to find him alive, I tried to pull his hands away, but he pushed me back and hit my face. "Fuck off, Varr brat!" he snarled, but I am sure he did not really know who I was.

I thought I would know madness when I saw it. The face that looked at me was not mad. There was anger, pain, despair, but also frightening sanity. "I'm sorry," I said feebly.

He sneered at my tears. "Get out of here!" He tried to lift himself and his face creased with pain. He punched the rock. "Get out of here!"

I put my arms around my knees and howled. Cal said nothing more. I didn't even know if he was watching me. After a while, I lifted my head and lie was sitting with his knees up, his elbows on his knees, the heels of his hands pressed into his eyes. "Cal," I said again, hopelessly.

After a moment, his hands dropped and he looked at me. It seemed he was saying, "Go on, look at me. This is grief. I weep real tears and only I have the right to."

"You're all dirty," I said in a small, husky voice. Cal swallowed and blinked.

"Swift." It was just a whisper.

"Yes?" Only the leaves dripped around us. Long, pointed, shiny leaves.

It was still dark, but the rain was stopping. Cal's face was a pale glow. He was filthy and haggard,
 
attenuated, perhaps the ultimate evil,
 
and yet. ... Can this be? I wondered.

"Swift," he said again and again I answered, "Yes . . ." "I never really forgot everything you know, at least... I don't think so." He held out one hand and looked at the water. "Little monster, little friend, come here, sit beside the lord of lies. I shall tell you such tales ..." I did not move and he turned his face toward me and smiled. "Please don't be afraid of me; that's absurd!"

Scrambling, I tumbled over the stones down to him and came to rest against his cold side. He put his arm around me. "Cobweb—" I began, but he put his other hand over my face and I could smell the rich, dark earth smell.

"No," he said, "don't try to apologize for him. He was only doing something he thought was right, and he may be right..." Whatever result my hostling had hoped to achieve, I did not think it was this. Perhaps Cobweb thought that Cal was dead, destroyed by magic or by his own hand.

"Swift, you must understand, I don't think I am consciously wicked, but I have done wicked things. Some of them nobody knows about, but others, they have driven me across the land, this way and that, always wandering . . ." He sighed and closed his eyes. "What brought me back here? "What?" His fingers squeezed my arm. "I must admit, my travels have brought me to good places sometimes, where good things can happen, things that can . . . touch me somehow. I'm here for a reason. What is it? Oh, Swift, you are the special one here, I think."

"Me?" I could not follow his ramblings. What did he mean?

"You remind me of someone I once knew," he said. "Not in looks, certainly, for there is too much of Cobweb in you, but that crazy, totally misguided, idealistic, childish view of things, that is very familiar to me. Very." He sighed and looked at me. Part of my soul seemed to melt right out of me into the ground.

"This is the part of the picture story where I draw my confession on your skin, I suppose."

"You don't have to," I said quickly, for I was afraid of hearing it.

"But there is only you!" he said. "Who else could I tell? I have to tell someone, don't I? That's the way things happen, isn't it? Now I've regained the burden of my lost memory, I have to share it with someone."

"Terzian will be back soon," I said, glumly.

Cal laughed. "Oh, Terzian!" He leaned his head back against the rock and I stared at his throat because it looked so long. "Terzian," Cal continued, in a thoughtful tone. "My confession would bore him. He is not here to absolve me, no, not that. I've been out of my mind and out of my body, now I'm back again. If I returned to Galhea because of him ..." He trailed off and smiled secretively.

"I'm cold," I grumbled. Cal snickered and I wondered, if like Cobweb, he could see into my mind. His free hand cupped my neck.

"Little Swift," he said.

"Let's go back to the house," I suggested, afraid that he was laughing at me.

"In a moment," Cal replied and before I could blink, he had me thoroughly in his arms and his mouth was on my own and my mind was full of red and black and rushing air. It was like dreams. I could see flames, only beyond the flames was a field of golden corn caressed by sunlight. I could smell it through the fire. I was not afraid. After a moment, it returned to merely flesh on flesh and the aftertaste of his tongue, which was like fresh apples. He put his lips against my closed eyes and held me to him.

"I once dreamed of you," I said. "In the dream you made me speak your name."

Cal rested his chin on the top of my head. "Did I?" he said.

We did not speak of what had happened in the summerhouse. I did not know how badly he had been hurt, but I had realized his strength was immeasurable, perhaps more so in spirit than in body. He was cut and bruised, but his injuries appeared to be only superficial; a scraped elbow, scratched shoulders. I wanted to lick his blood, I wanted to be like him. We walked back to the house.

I was afraid of meeting Cobweb, but Cal wasn't bothered about that at all. "So let him see me. What harm can he possibly do me now?" When he first stood up, Cal had complained of dizziness but by the time we walked in through the back door of Forever, he had completely recovered. The house was full of the smell of fruit cooking and I could hear Gahrazel's laughter coming from the drawing room. Sunlight filled the hall; the storm had passed us. I followed Cal into his room. "Just wait here while I take a bath," he said.

After a while, I plucked up the courage to go over to his desk and look at the papers lying on it. If I thought I'd find answers, I was wrong. I could understand nothing of what he'd written. It was complete gibberish, but dark in mood and disquieting. It was inevitable that he should come back into the room, a towel around his waist, rubbing his hair with another, and catch me red-handed, but he did not seem to mind.

"If you were older," he said, "we'd have taken that bath together."

I looked away. "But I'm not."

"No. I forget how old you are sometimes; you look much older. I'm sorry, it must have been confusing for you." He sat down on the bed.

"You mean what happened at the lake?" I asked, hesitantly.

"Yes, the legendary, essentially Wraeththu sharing of breath. Don't tell your father. It was very impulsive of me, and no doubt very corrupting."

(Don't tell your father, he said. Of course not. No. That part of Cal, the hands, the lips, the eyes, that was reserved for Terzian alone. I have not enough to offer; I am empty.) I tried to smile and watched him stand up and stretch. Magnificent, and forever beyond me. I turned to the window.

"I don't understand you, Cal. How come you always spring back like Ibis? Nothing bad ever seems to affect you."

He shrugged. "Oh, I wouldn't say that. But I'm not self-indulgent, if that's what you mean. Anyway, as I said before, I don't think I'd really lost my memory. Cobweb just made me face things and it was for the best. I'm glad that he did now."

I had to smile at that. "Cobweb will be furious. None of that was supposed to help you, you know."

"But it did." He looked over his shoulder into the mirror and examined his back.

"You're incredible."

"Years of effort have gone into that effect," he said and winked at me.

He went back into the bathroom to dress and I sat at his desk. Soon I laughed out loud. Perhaps we were still at the lake; perhaps this was just an illusion and we were still melded mouth to mouth, living dreams. (If I think hard enough, can I make it true?) Cal walked up behind me, but he didn't touch me. I had the absurd feeling that he never would again, but at that moment, I felt too intoxicated to care.

"What are you laughing at?" he asked.

I shrugged helplessly; I couldn't explain.

"Pellaz is dead," he said.

I turned in the seat and looked at him. "Dead?" Cal saw what I was thinking and shook his head quickly, frowning.

"No, no, I didn't kill him. That's not the death the incomparable Cobweb saw around me. Let's sit down together, Swift. I want to talk to you.

"You are virgin in every conceivable way," he said. "Untouched, unmarked. Incredible really, when you think that you're a Varr and Terzian's son at that, but then, he's always looked after his own. Pell and I noticed that when we were here before. The Varrs are cattle and Terzian is the big, black bull!" Cal told me something of how he had met Pellaz, who had been unhar at the time, totally human. "He seemed about the

same age as you then, but of course probably eight or nine years older." I learned about the Nahir-Nuri whose blood had made Pellaz har, whose name was Thiede. My skin prickled. I remembered my father speaking of him. Cal's eyes seemed to go black when he talked of Thiede. "It was he who murdered Pell!"

"You saw?!"

Cal shook his head. "You don't understand. I saw Pell die, and the person who did it, but it wasn't Thiede who fired the bullet. He's too clever for that, but I do know."

"Why would he want to kill Pell?" I asked.

Cal laughed bitterly. "Why? Oh, who can understand Thiede's reasons for doing things? One day I shall know the reason. Unfortunately (and here it comes, Swift), I killed the one person who could have told me. That's the blood your charming hostling sees dripping from my hands all over the dinner table."

I looked at his hands, but I could not see death in them. They were the hands of love, if anything.

"Beautiful, aren't they?" he said, lifting them up. I knew that; I had felt them upon me.

"Were you in love with Pell?" I asked. Perhaps that was impertinent, but I had to know. Cal did not hesitate.

"When someone says they are madly in love, there is no more fitting description for it. Madness, yes. It is worse than dying to lose it. It's like having your brains unraveled and squashed back into your head the wrong way. I loved him, I still do, very much." He thumped the bed with the flat of his hand and smiled and sighed. "Of course, out there, in the wonderful real world, love is an outlawed concept. Pell had a teacher once upon a time. His name was Orien, he was my friend; I killed him. It took me a long time to get Pell to unlearn all the pious things Orien taught him about love."

"I don't understand," I said.

"No, of course you don't. Let me illustrate it. Your hostling is in love with Terzian and then I come along and Cobweb is so scared of losing Terzian that he wants to kill me, or at least drive me insane. Now Wraeththu don't like that kind of thing; it's messy. The real Wraeththu that is. We're supposed to exist sublimely together, scorning the passions of jealousy, seeking aruna as a spiritual exercise and beaming with tranquility over everyone. It's a horrendous idea! So dull."