The Wraeththu Chronicles (6 page)

"Yes." He was so cold, so unlike the Seel I had come to expect over the last day.

"Now, all you need to know is that the Harhune itself is painless. You don't have to be afraid." That was one thing I had not anticipated: pain. It unnerved me that Seel should mention it. "Just think of it like this. In a few days' time it will all be over and you'll know everything you want to. Now, you have an hour or so yet. Do you want to see Cal before I take you away?" His voice was less harsh.

I glanced up at him; a face inscrutable with restrained amusement. "Yes . , . please."

He laughed then and patted my shoulder, reaching for another cigarette. "Treat him gently, he's as nervous as you are."

Yes, I thought, probably because he knows what is going to happen to me.

Cal slunk in like a guilty dog and Seel left us alone. When our eyes met it was like being scalded and we both looked away quickly.

"I brought you into this," Cal said with a grimace and a weak attempt at humor.

As usual, all the wrong things started pouring from my mouth. "I don't know what's happening, but the way everyone's carrying on, it must be worse than I think. Unhealthy for me, anyway!"

Cal sat down beside me. "Oh, fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" he profaned. I had never heard him swear before; he was so fastidious. "Oh, God, I don't care what the law says. I'm not supposed to tell you anything but, yes, in a way, it is unhealthy. You must have heard the stories; some of them even died... It's not all exaggeration, you know."

"Oh Cal!" I gasped. "Thanks! Thanks!" I put my head in my hands, arrowed by shock. Possible death was a consequence of becoming Wraeththu I had not considered.

"You had to know. There is a risk, but I think knowing that will make you stronger. You are strong, Pell." I looked at him through my fingers. He was sallow with worry. "It's necessary," he said. "We cannot afford to carry dead wood."

"I know." I straightened my back and closed my eyes. I could feel my hair, soon to be gone, heavy on my shoulders; the first time I had even noticed its weight. "I want to be Wraeththu," I murmured.

"I want you to be as well," said Cal and inevitably we fumbled toward each other, Nearly every time we had touched, I had clung to him like a mewling brat. Tonight was no exception. He wound his fingers in my hair and stroked my neck. I could feel him sighing. His smell was clean and musky, like new-mown hay.

"You've only known me a week, or so," I said.

"A week, a lifetime; what difference?" He held me so tightly, I nearly choked.

Seel walked in and found us like that, just holding onto each other as if for the last time. He passed no comment, but he obviously did not trust Cal not to blab everything to me. We had been alone for about ten minutes.

Just before midnight, Seel stood up and signaled to me. "Now, Pell," he said.

"Just bring him back in one piece," Cal told him, not smiling,

"Oh come on, Calanthe, my dear, you'll be there, watching, I know you will." Seel started herding me toward the door. As we left, he called back over his shoulder. "Just start thinking about aruna, Cal!" And he laughed. "What's that?" I asked him, not really expecting an answer. "The finest time of your life, little Pellaz. If only I could be you." A sentiment I was not averse to sharing, adding drily, "If I get through the Harhune, of course."

Seel made a small noise of annoyance. "You're not safe for a minute, are you. I might have known he'd tell you something. Cal's so emotional, I sometimes think he's still half human."

There is a point when facing the unknown stops being a longed-for adventure and becomes a terrifying reality. When you are young, it is so easy to blunder into situations when misplaced heroism is no substitute for good sense. As I followed Seel to the Forale-house, I started doubting. I had no idea what they would do to me. I had given myself into the hands of strangers with no assurance that they were concerned about my well-being. Cal had glamorized me. His wistful and haunting beauty, his mysterious and perhaps violent past, appealed to me, an inexperienced and immature boy, as make-believe superheroes had appealed to young boys throughout the ages. As much as I realized my impulsive folly, I also knew that it was too late to back out. I would never have been able to find my way home, even if the Wraeththu had allowed it. Perhaps, too, I now knew too much, little as it was, for them to let me go. As Seel opened the door to my fate, the brief intimacy with Cal and the way I had felt about him, had faded. All I knew was that stultifying, indescribable sensation that is the one true fear.

The light inside was dim, but I could make out a bare room, furnished with as little as was practical. A narrow bed stuck out from the far wall. There was a strong smell of creosote

All I wanted to do was curl up on the floor and shut my eyes tight until everything went away.

"Pellaz." Seel's touch on my shoulder brought me around a little. His eyes told me all I needed to know.

Once, he had been in my place. Once even Seel had stood at the threshhold of acceptance, doubting. For the first time, I noticed the faint lines around his eyes and the shadow within them that told of the fighting, the struggle. What were Wraeththu?

"Pell, this is Mur and Garis. They are here to help you through the next few days. They

will attend to you."

Two figures were standing in the doorway to another room. Neither looked at me with sympathy,

only a kind of resigned boredom. They moved, with slouching ennui, to either side of Seel,

sharp and angular strangers, dressed in dull gray. Seel lifted his head, his face shadowed

yet luminous in the yellow light.

"Pellaz Unhar, now is the time of your Inception. It is decreed that you shall be prepared

in your physical, mental and spiritual states for your approaching Harhune. Do you deliver

yourself into our hands for this time, your Forale?"

"Yes." My voice was faint, but what else could I have said.

"Then we may commence." He relaxed and rubbed his face, casting off the incongruous image of high priest. Normally, I would have laughed at it all; arcane words and special effects. At the time, it was deadly serious.

"Garis and Mur will bathe you now," he said. "I can promise you, by the end of all this you will hate the sight of a bath. See you tomorrow."

Without a further glance at me he went out, letting the door swing shut with a horrible finality behind him.

"This way," the one called Garis drawled at me. Gray shirt, gray trousers, iron-gray hair, like the color of a horse, half plaited and held up on his head with loose combs. His feet were bare, the toe-nails more like claws. Mur was similarly attired, only his hair was dyed black, mostly cut short and spiked everywhere except at the nape of his neck, where it was braided to below his shoulder-blades. I followed them into the other room which was lit more brilliantly. Two lamps. It was a bathroom that looked more like a dissecting chamber. Two scrubbed tables, a deep, narrow bath and a sink that looked like steel. All that was missing were the knives and the rubber gloves. Chatting to each other, not even looking at me, Mur and Garis pulled off my clothes. I stood there, shivering and naked, while they busied themselves about the room. Even if they had actually shouted, Pellaz, you are absolutely worthless!," it would not have been more clear.

Thoughts of my old home echoed through my mind. Mima's smile, a dim endless replay; squeaky sounds I could not understand. Somewhere nearby Cal was sitting or standing, talking, drinking. Laughing? Did he think of me? Tears of a child dewed my lashes but did not fall. I let the strangers put me into the bath. Salt water licked at all my old cuts and scratches. Garis wrenched my arms as he scrubbed at me. It felt like they were rubbing slivers of glass into my skin.

At the end of it, I was lifted out, impersonally, and dried off with a coarse towel, red and smarting from head to toe.

"Here, put that on!" Garis threw me a bundle of cloth. As I struggled wretchedly to dress myself, the other two laughed together. I dared say nothing, but I hated them. The kind of hate you can nearly see, it is so strong.

"You can go to bed now," Mur mentioned, throwing a cold glance over his shoulder as he folded the towels. Garis leaned against the sink, preening his fingernails, looking at me through slitted eyes. He held me in utter contempt, I burned at the humiliation, the unfairness

They had several days during which to torment me. Hitching up the unflattering robe I was wearing, I shuffled back through the door. They started talking as soon as I had gone.

"Human bodies are so disgusting, like animals," Mur said.

"How lucky for you you never had one!" I heard Garis remind him sarcastically. Disgusting? Animal? To me I looked no different from them.

They extinguished the lamps before they left. Not a word of farewell. I huddled on the hard bed trying to warm myself with the thin blanket that covered it. Rough material chafed my skin and scratching myself only made it worse. A window, high up, showed me a perfect sky sequinned with lustrous stars. Moonlight fell across my face. I wanted to weep, but I was numb. Why were they so cruel? I could not understand, innocent as I was.

Nobody had ever been actively hostile to me in my life before. Too beaten to be angry anymore, I sank into a restless sleep and the dreams, when they came, were ranting horrors, perverse possibilities.

I had been awake for what seemed hours when Seel sauntered in. He gave me a flask of water, and did not ask how I was feeling. Already my stomach was protesting furiously at not being fed. I had eaten poorly the day before and regretted it deeply now. Sitting dejectedly on the bed, still scratching, I sipped the water.

" Pellaz thinks he's in hell." Seel regarded me inscrutably. I said nothing. "I can remember," he continued. "One day, perhaps, you will be in my position. Soon, you will see . . ."

"It is necessary," I said dully.

Seel chewed his cheek thoughtfully. "You must be purified. To do that you must suffer humiliation. Only from trial may the spirit flower," he quoted, from something.

"Is this a lesson?" My spirit was far from flowering.

Seel raised an eyebrow. "As a matter of fact, yes. Someone else is coming to instruct you fully, though. He's a high ranking Ulani, called Orien. Don't antagonize him, Pell. He may turn you into a frog."

I could see he was struggling to be patient with me. I was supposed to be the abject supplicant awaiting enlightenment, but at the moment, I was slipping the other way.

Orien, however, did much to dispel my petulance. He was blessed with the kind of manner that instantly lightens the atmosphere. His clothes were threadbare and his hair, half tied back with a black ribbon, was escaping confinement over his shoulders. He rarely stopped smiling. Before beginning my lessons, he told me we would meditate together, "Try to empty your mind," he said, as we sat cross-legged on the floor. For me, that was an impossibility. I did not really know what meditation was and my mind was buzzing like a nest of wasps. I could not keep still. After a while, Orien sighed and rummaged in the bag he had brought with him. "Put out your tongue, Pell." He touched me with a bitter paste from a tiny glass pot. I grimaced and he smile at me. "Come on, swallow." My throat burned, but in a short time a pleasant coolness seeped through ray limbs and crawled toward my mind. "Now, we shall try again."

This time it was easy. Gradually, I was eased into a white and soothing blankness and I began to drift, high above my troubles. Intelligence welled within me, as my situation hardened into sharp focus in my brain. I was so earthbound, so wrapped up in myself, I was blind to essential truths. Emotion filled me. It was there; the truth was within my grasp. The door was opening to me ...

Orien's hands snapped together sharply. The wrench of coming back took my breath away. "You are privileged, Pellaz," he said, nodding. (What did he mean?) "But you have a lot to learn. It is all strange to you and you have so much to overcome. Human prejudices, human bonds, human greed . . ."

"Human frailty," I could not help adding. I remembered it from church.

Orien reached out to ruffle my hair. "Pretty child, yes, that too," he laughed. "Now. Tell me what you think Wraeththu is."

I was totally unprepared.

"Well?"

"I ... I don't know." It was feeble.

Orien was exhibiting that unfailing Wraeththu patience. "Oh, come on. I can't believe you haven't thought about it. Tell me what you think."

Next to him, Seel shifted his position on the floor and cleared his throat. He was either bored or embarassed.

"Well," I began, leaning forward to clasp my toes. "I suppose I think it started like a gang of boys ... I don't know . . . something like that, and then it just grew. You don't think of yourselves as human though, do you, but I'm not sure what the difference is. ... You all seem so ... so ... old. It sounds stupid .. . you look young, but you're not.. ." My mind was full of ideas but I did not have the words to voice them. I shook my head. Orien did not press me further. "Old? I'm twenty-one, Seel's nineteen, aren't you?"

Seel did not look amused. "No, twenty now, if it really is that important. "

"How old were you ..." I began, but Orien waved his hand to silence me.