The Wraeththu Chronicles (67 page)

"Do you think he knows something?"

"He tells me everything," I said. "What can he know that we don't?"

"You know him better than I do."

"Oh, I don't know. What with your constant and careful study of Cobweb ..."

"Are you jealous?" he teased.

"No, of course not." I rolled onto my back.

"He must be lonely."

"Cobweb is always lonely!"

Cal stood up and looked at himself in the mirror above the mantelpiece.

"Swift. . ." he said.

I sat up. "I wouldn't advise it, Cal." I could see clearly what he was thinking.

"Now or never," he said, cheerily. He went to the door.

"Will I see you later?" I called.

"I hope not!" he replied.

For a while, I just sat staring at the shapes in the flames, shadows leaping beyond the hearth, thinking, what is happening to us? We are slipping, we are slipping. . . . Had Terzian ever said to Cal, "What is mine is yours"? Had he? Wood popped in the fire. I threw on another log. Behind me, stretching away, the house was silent. My ears strained to hear through that silence. There was nothing. I went out into the hall and stood looking up the dark stairs, one hand on the bannister, one foot on the bottom step. Bryony came out of the passage that led to the kitchen. "Shall I turn off the lights down here?" she asked and I must have nodded. Her footsteps died away, into the house. The hall was full of the smell of greenery; ivy hanging down from the lights, softly moving with the chime of glass, torn ivy on the red stair carpet.

Cobweb's room was empty but his chair had been knocked over and there was a faint hint of outrage in the atmosphere. I ran up the corridor, up the few stairs that led to Cal's room, thinking that Cal had dragged or led Cobweb there, but the door was wide open and the room beyond in darkness. I was experiencing a strong sense of deja vu. This had happened before. I looked in on Ty, but he was sleeping peacefully. All the doorways looked hostile and silent, sealed mouths. Behind any one. ... A single, slight, echoing noise reached my ears. Prickles of cold broke out all over my skin. I prowled back down the haunted corridor and paused outside my father's door. Was anyone in there? I reached to knock, then hesitated. Perhaps Cobweb did know something. Were they in there? My father's room . . . Gahrazel's face was suddenly before my eyes, laughing. I could see him young again. Again, almost inaudible, a muffled sound reached me from within the room. It could have been anything; fear, anger, pain or submission. We shall know all of this house one day . . .

Before I realized what I was doing, I was pelting back along the corridor, toward the steep, forbidding stairs that led to the upper stories. Winter lived there, my breath was steam and the eerie, violated darkness was terrible. But instinct guided me and horror of the waiting dark could not touch me. I could almost hear the echo of our voices, Gahrazel's and mine, so long ago, a lifetime away, scampering through these forgotten halls. His voice was so real to me. "Do you know nothing, Swift?"

I found the room quite easily. Something flaked from the handle when I turned it. A supernatural rod of yellow light pointed upwards from the floor within. I went toward it and bent my face into its glow. Traveling down this ray of light, I saw below me, through a splintered hole that had waited here all this time for just this moment, my father's room. There were leaves everywhere as if the garden had bursting through the windows; a feeling of cold. I could sense the sparking presences of Cobweb and Cal, facing each other like unleashed elementals, but I could not see them. I heard Cal cry, "What will happen to us?!" and his voice lacked its usual confidence.

My hostling, when he answered, sounded chill and distant. "I have seen it..."

"Seen? Seen what?"

Cobweb's voice was merely a whisper. "I saw a great smoke. You went into it. Swift was with you..." There was a pause and then he spoke again, ragged with haste. "You must go that way. It is your destiny . . ."Cal moved into my line of sight. He had hold of Cobweb by the wrist, which was bloodless, the hand curled into a dead claw. "Don't speak in riddles!" Cal cried impatiently.

"That's what I saw."

Cobweb's dead voice made me shiver. I steadied myself and bent lower to the floor.

"When?" Cal demanded. He did not get an answer. "Oh yes, of course! This is what you've been waiting for, isn't it? Have you made it happen? You will be glad to see me gone! Is this a lie?"

"No, I have not lied."

"But you hate me!"

"I speak the truth!" Cobweb wriggled away from Cal's grasp and put his taloned hands on Cal's shoulders as if to shake him. "Their Tigron is with them!" he cried, and his face was unbelievably white. The white of marble, of death. He crumpled into Cal's arms, so utterly without design, and it seemed Cal was nearly weeping.

"What do you mean? Tell me! Who are they?"

"Gelaming," my hostling rasped. "I have seen them . . . Not here ... in the smoke, in the mist above the lake. You will go to them, both of you, through the forest of fear, into the mouth of your sin, where the beast speaks, where the beast walks and his blood is our blood. Oh! There is no escaping . . ."

I too wanted to scream, "What are you talking about?" but it was Cal's voice, not my own, ringing in my ears.

"Soon ..." Cobweb straightened up and his hands fluttered to his face. "You want to bind me, but I am bound already," he said.

"Cobweb . . . ?"

My hostling backed away, very slowly. "You must take me; flesh to flesh, soul to soul. I have seen that too . . . many times."

"Is it something that you want?"

Cobweb frowned, shook his head. "It is just something I have dreamed of."

"Tell me about the dreams."

"Not yet. Oh .. ." Cobweb sat down on the edge of my father's bed. "I shall be left alone and there will be a time of glass, like shattering, like shards of light, and the past shall come back like a shimmering veil... I shall be left alone, but not for long . . . Cal?"

Cal did not even bother to conceal the fear in his face. Mostly I could see only the top of his head, but his body was held rigid as if ready to flee.

"I want you now," my hostling said, with bizarre sanity, and held out his arms. I denied the vision of sanity. He is mad, I thought, quite mad.

"I remember you, how you were before," Cal said to him.

Cobweb shrugged. "Faces from the past are always with us. They follow you too, Cal."

"Is it Seel?"

"You are obsessed with that. Too much is hidden from me; I cannot say."

Silence settled around them like dust. They were both staring at the floor deep in thought and then their heads rose like snakes, their eyes met.

"I don't like this room," Cal said, rubbing his arms. "It is cold."

Cobweb tried to stand and faltered, his body trembling, shivering, his breath misting. Cal lifted him up, trying to gather, control, the sprawling, shuddering limbs. Cobweb appeared to have sunk into a trance. His head lolled over Cal's arm; his eyes were open, but blank. Cal held him reverently, gazing with undisguised tenderness into his empty face. They did not know they were being watched.

I heard them leave the room. The light went out and I was left in darkness, conscious only of the wind-sounds beating at the house, windows rattling. Gahrazel was in this place, poisoned and bitter. I shuddered and ran quickly to the door.

I didn't think I'd be able to sleep. What were Cal and Cobweb doing? I )id they share aruna or anger and bitter words? I surprised myself by waking up and realizing that half my thoughts had been dreams.

Cobweb came to my room soon after. I had never seen him so radiant, but it was under the surface. Superficially, he was nervous and harried. He didn't know how to tell me, yet he felt he had to. I made it easier for him.

"So, what happened with you and Cal then?"

Cobweb grimaced at me and then came to sit next to me on the bed, plucking restlessly at the covers. It was hard to believe that we were not the same age, harder still to believe that he was my hostling. He shook his head and said, "Oh, Swift!"

I touched his face. "Jealousy and desire are not the most comfortable of friends," I said.

Cobweb smiled ruefully. "It must always have been there, of course. Strange, I don't often deceive myself, only other people. Now I remember I am not only soume, but ouana too. Perhaps I have woken up, perhaps some part of me shall die."

"We've had enough talk of death!" I remarked sharply.

Cobweb stood up and shook out his hair. "Strange that someone else should find me real," he said.

Later, Cal told me about Cobweb's visions. I could see how much he thought of my hostling by the fact that he would not speak of anything else that had happened between them. "It seems that one day we'll be heading south together," he said, corroding a certain dreaminess with cheer. "I wonder when."

"We must enjoy this Festival," I said dubiously. "It may be our last."

Cal laughed when I said that. It was just the kind of thing he liked to hear.

It took some months for something to happen, however. Spring was approaching and our lives had lapsed into a regular, if tentative routine. I thought that my brother should begin his education far sooner than I had done and spoke to Moswell about it. Tyson might not be allowed a proper childhood. His would certainly be nothing like mine had been, whatever happened. I used to think that, but for the threat of the Gelaming, we could have been truly happy at that time. There seemed to be no hatred in the 1 house any more. All the disruptive spirits had left it. But we all knew how

temporary this contentment might be. My father had been gone for so long and we had had no word from him, not even rumor. It was as if the Varrs had simply vanished into the mist, as if they had never been.

It all crept up on us stealthily. I, and Ithiel too, had expected messengers, torn and wounded, galloping madly, riding north to bring us news. But it was nothing like that.

One evening, Ithiel came to me while I sat in my father's study. I liked to spend time in there, for it seemed to bring me closer to Terzian. Also, | I found it interesting to read through his notes and books. I learned much about how he ran Galhea and how he had organized his war-torn people when they had first arrived there. Already the days were getting longer and the house was full of sunset, sleepy and relaxed. I was sipping coffee, feet up on the desk, gazing out at the garden. One thing that I had initiated since my father's departure was that intruders were not to be shot on sight as Terzian had once ordered. I gave the excuse that more could be learned by interrogating strangers than by butchering them, but the truth was that indiscriminate killing appalled me. Perhaps it was because I always imagined being in that situation myself. Anyway we had no other way of getting news.

It seemed I'd had to change so much and in a short space of time. Galhea needed my father; he was not there. I was all they could have, the only son. Daily, I would go to the administration office my father used in Galhea and listen to his people's problems. I was not a trader or a farmer and had complained to Ithiel that he was surely far better equipped to deal with the people's queries and settle their disputes than I. Ithiel only smiled and patted me on the shoulder. "Trader, farmer, you certainly aren't," he said. "But you are fair, Swift. That's what they need. You are Terzian's son and I shall help you as much as you want me to, but it must be your mouth they hear the words from, not mine." Help me he did. It was obvious why Terzian relied on him so much.

Now Ithiel came into the study and smiled, amused at my unselfconscious imitation of my father.

"Intruders have been found in the forest," he said. "They were making for Galhea . . ."

"Human or hara?" I asked.

"Well, both actually," he replied. "A band of wanderers, like gypsies. They call themselves Zigane, which I understand means gypsy anyway. Tribeless people banded together. Their leader is a woman . . . she is what they call a pythoness, a sorceress and . . ." He looked uncomfortable. "Swift, she has asked to see you."

"By name?"

He nodded. "Her name is Tel-an-Kaa."

"How strange," I said, more to myself. "You had better find out what she wants of me, and who sent her!"

Tel-an-Kaa, the pythoness, would not speak to anyone but me. To Ithiel, she would only keep repeating that her message was for Terzian's son alone; when I sent Swithe to her, she would not even acknowledge his presence. Something about the Zigane commanded respect. They had hara among them; Ithiel's soldiers were loath to use aggression against them; it was a superstitious fear, more than anything. I held my ground for three days and at the end of that time, sent Ithiel to the pythoness with word that I would visit her at midday.

The Zigane were indeed gypsies, or at least had modeled themselves upon gypsy appearance. They had set up a camp in the middle of the town, already selling trinkets and cloth to the Varrs. They lived in gaudy, decorated caravans and affected a matching mode of attire. We were told they worshiped snakes and that the pythoness could scry in reptile tongue.

It was not easy to tell the humans and hara apart. Both races were lean, tanned and sinewy, their clothes entirely similar. Ithiel conducted me to Tel-an-Kaa's caravan. It looked no larger than the rest, although it was bigger on the inside than it appeared on the outside. I ducked into the perfumed gloom of the interior and had my first glimpse of her. She was sitting on the edge of a couch, like a girl, her velvet gown worn and shabby, long, pale hair falling over her shoulders like rags, yet I could tell in an instant that I was looking at a queen. Her small face was serenity and splendor, half smiling, full of secrets. It is in the blood, true royalty. Perhaps we recognized that feature in each other.