The Wraeththu Chronicles (76 page)

Imbrilim was the size of a small town, and full of life. By day all the swaying canopies were held back and as I walked through the avenues of pavilions, I could see right into them. It was apparent that there were several places where all the inhabitants of Imbrilim went to eat. These seemed open for business all day, so it was rare that anyone took meals in their own pavilions. All this was paid for by the Hegemony of Immanion; the only things that hara had to pay for themselves were narcotics and alcohol. Tents for the consumption of beverages were set apart from those serving meals. Everywhere, the flags and pennants of Immanion flapped lazily in the breeze. Their symbols were the double-headed axe, the scarab and two serpents entwined around a sword. All these signified the two-in-one; hermaphroditism. Above a huge pavilion of purple and gold (which I later learned belonged to the Hegemony) shivered the black and silver banner of the Tigron; a lion with a fish's tail shimmering against a dark ground. I lost myself entirely, but I couldn't stop walking.

Arahal sought me out. He found me eventually by the horses, corraled on the boundaries of Imbrilim. They were snowy creatures of myth, whose feet danced with the ache for wings. I reached toward them, my hand like Ivory, and a dozen blue-black noses blew warmth upon my skin. They absorbed me and turned their heads to look at me properly. One tossed his snowy mane and threw up his head, nickering softly. That was Arahal coming; they knew him.

"I have never ceased to marvel at their magnificence," he said.

I was too intimidated to speak. I could only smile in a way I'd not smiled since I could still climb comfortably onto Cobweb's lap.

Arahal insisted on taking me on a tour of Imbrilim; we passed many things that I'd already seen, but he explained a lot to me about the way the Gelaming conducted their daily lives. He pointed out a magnificent construction of sparkling white muslin. "That is where we remember the Aghama," he said.

"Aghama?" I queried. It sounded like an event.

'The first Wraeththu," Arahal explained.

I had no idea what he meant. Yet another area of my education so sadly neglected. It was strange that I had never wondered about it, really. After all, Wraeththu must have come from somewhere. Now I learned the truth of our wondrous genesis. We had sprung from one mutant; born to a human female, a hermaphrodite child, whose special talents were seen by his parents as freakish abnormalities. Through his blood, he had created the new race; Wraeththu. To his people he had become the Aghama, revered almost as a god. I had known nothing of this, not even Cobweb had ever mentioned anything about this shadowy, part-mythological figure of the Aghama.

Arahal did not seem surprised. To him, Varrs were nothing but godless barbarians. He was prepared to educate me and took me inside the Fane of the Aghama. It was barely furnished; just a few polished benches before a table on which stood maybe a dozen slim, lit tapers. There was no representation of the first Wraeththu, either in paint or stone. "We come here to think, to remember," Arahal told me.

"Remember what?" I asked.

"Our beginning," he replied, and in such a somber tone, I shrank from further queries.

Out in the sunlight, I remember wondering aloud, "What am I doing here?" Arahal only

smiled. I recalled Cal once asking that question of my father, and Terzian's reply,

"Must you ask that every day?" I don't think Cal had ever truly known the answer; now

I felt my own question was doomed to the same fate.

Arahal said, "Megalithica. ... It is a grand name. The hara that shall come to rule

here will be equal in stature and their sons will possess the wisdom of the

generations."

What generations? As Arahal walked beside me, glowing with an inner light of pride, I thought about how the Gelaming had plucked their culture, even their cities, from the air and imbued it with a luster of centuries. It was a lie. Their culture was still damp from its birthing, yet they talked as if they had owned the earth a thousand years. It had taken men so long to step away from the creatures of the forest and the plain, up from the slime, the first discovery of fire and shelter. Perhaps they had stepped too far, too far to get back, and their isolation had shriveled them ... perhaps. Wraeththu are animals; they are not men, they will not call themselves human. I could say to myself, "I am an animal," and see something shining in the dark, powerful, sleek and close to the earth. My eyes can light up and my teeth are sharp enough to kill, yet now, it seems, I must fold away my fangs and claws and learn to lie down with the lamb whose flesh is so tempting. Gelaming taught me: there is no murder, just negative impulses to scorch the soul and a temporary destruction of flesh. The soul will always return. Only the murderer ultimately suffers from the act of killing. I wondered why they wished to educate me, what use I was to serve them, but my questions were sidestepped. Arahal would say to me, "Do you not want to be full of feelings that are smooth and straight? Don't you want to be able to see around corners? We can help you to speak in colors, to see the pattern of sounds that are other hara's thoughts. This is the true mutation!" Mutation: change. It seems my childhood fears would surface once again.

If they had come to Galhea, the Gelaming would never have killed us, or even sent us away from our homes, as we'd feared. We would just have been smothered quietly, our bewilderment soothed, the knives taken from our hands. Their conquering power was not violence, but no less effective because of it. We had been so wrong about them, and my father had ridden toward this without knowing. If he was with the Gelaming, I was sure he must be dead. If his body still lived, the Terzian I had known (and the one I had not) would be quenched from the fire in his eyes. Whatever I had learned about him, I had enough mercy within me to hope that he had truly died, and in the only way he'd have been proud of fighting.

Back to that first day, strolling in the sunlight with Arahal, his hand upon my shoulder. The air around us was full of insects with wide, gossamer wings. They got in our hair and sparked there like gems as they fluttered to death. I felt disorientated, unsure of whether I was dreaming. None of this seemed real.

Arahal smiled benevolently at me. "Ours is the only way, Swift, You will come to know us. You will see this for yourself."

"Why me?" I asked him. "What do you want of me? I'm not ready for it, whatever it is. My soul is too young. It does not crave this." I did not even understand myself what I was trying to convey.

Arahal laughed. "You are still in the forest, Swift. You must let go and come out of the trees." Gelaming seem to hate answering questions. It's not that they prefer secrecy, they just expect people to find out the answers for themselves.

"I want Cobweb," I said, helplessly. "I want my hostling."

"He is always with you."

"No, not here." I could barely remember Cobweb's face.

We passed a large pavilion, whose awnings were of palest pink and gold. Later, I found out it was a meeting place for those of high rank; the Hegemony and their closest

staff. At its entrance, a group of hara stood in conversation, their hands gliding to complement their speech. Pain brought a bitter taste to my mouth. One of them was Seel.

Arahal called a greeting. Seel turned and looked and shook out his hair and smiled. I had not imagined him like this. Cal had described him differently to me. This was the har who had built a town from bare, corroded rock and blistered his hands tearing at the soda valleys in the south. Now he was just Gelaming, sanitized and unsoiled. He should have had snakes for hair. He did not look at me once.

I was not taken to the Hegemony for three days. During this time, Cal, Leef and I remained in our canopied home, emerging only to eat, when we would sit together in the quietest corner we could find in the nearest pavilion that served food. Once or twice, strangers came to talk with us, refugees from the north, as they supposed us to be. We were afraid of revealing too much about ourselves (all conversation seemed to turn to the Varrs and their atrocities), so shrank from responding to any friendly overtures. We amused ourselves by playing with the pack of cards Arahal had brought us and drinking vast amounts of wine.

Far from recovering from my weakness brought on by our journey through the forest, I seemed to be getting worse. It was an effort to do anything. I couldn't eat, but I was still the only one who ever went for a walk outside the pavilion. I liked the way nobody bothered me. I could wander half drunk for hours in total peace with people all around me. That was the best thing about Imbrilim, I think. Cal was on edge all the time, dreading further contact with Seel, while Leef was sullen and silent. It was a relief to get away from them occasionally.

"Why doesn't he come?!" Cal shouted out, unexpectedly, one evening.

"He will never come!" I answered, knowing that to be unbearably true.

Cal sat down on the floor. "He's changed," he murmured, to himself more than to Leef or me. "Once he would have come storming in here, yelling at me ... now it's like, it's like he's been gelded or something."

"Different fire, different fire ..." I rambled.

Cal put his head in his hands. "I must see him!" he insisted.

Seel never came.

In the evenings, I liked to stand at the entrance to our pavilion, taking in deep lungfuls of scented air that always smelled of nostalgia to me. Often, laughing groups of humans and hara would stroll past, lost in conversation, lost in friendship, perhaps on their way for an evening drink in one of the ale tents. Once Cal joined me. "It's disgusting! I hate them!" he said. Sometimes I could bear it no longer and would have to go looking around Imbrilim, looking for him. I usually found him. I seemed to have an uncanny instinct for sniffing him out. The best time was when I found him alone, in a field, beyond the camp. I don't think he was dancing, just exercising his body, but it was incredible to watch. There was no music, but I could tell he was hearing it. He was so slim, it seemed impossible that he contained all the right bits inside him. The thought of it was inconceivable. Such a perfect being could not be blood and bile and gut. Inside, he would be made of glass or crystal or cloud. Maybe all three. I watched him entranced, full of pain. Once he looked right at me and seemed to stretch just that little bit further. I hated him knowing I was watching, but he did not seem to mind. He was used to an audience.

Afterwards, I told Cal about it. He did not laugh, as I had expected. "What is waiting for us?" he asked me. "I can feel something breathing down the back of my neck, just outside, just above us, perhaps. Why do they make us wait?"

Miserably, I took him in my arms and we sat on the floor, among the silken cushions, in silence, tasting each other's thoughts without the contact of lips or flesh. After

a while, Cal said, "I get the feeling ... I don't think I'll be around here for much longer."

I could not answer him, for I knew that it was true.

In the morning, Arahal came for me. The sunlight beyond the canopies was hard and glittering, like Arahal's silver hair. He was dressed in skin-tight black trousers, with a confection of straps and silver chains adorning his chest and back. There were black feathers woven into his hair. He looked magnificent, a prince of legend. I was feeling horribly light-headed because of the skimpy meals I'd had over the past few days, but Arahal did not seem to notice or concern himself with my condition. I was sure that if I fell, he would just sling me over his shoulder and carry on walking, chatting amiably about things I would never remember or even hear properly.

He took me directly to the purple and gold pavilion and told me cheerfully that I was to be given an audience by members of the Hegemony. I was miserably conscious of my bedraggled and feeble appearance and knew I was in no state to present myself well. "Does it have to be today?" I asked.

"I thought you wanted your questions answered," Arahal replied.

An intensely beautiful har, dressed in floating gray gauze, with thigh-length platinum-colored hair, conducted us into an antechamber. "I am Velaxis," he told me. I got the impression that was supposed to mean something. "If you would wait here a few moments, Tiahaara . . ." He swayed off into the curtains.

"Velaxis is a creature of renown," Arahal said drily.

"Is he one of the Hegemony?" I asked.

Arahal shook his head and smiled. "Oh no, but he is very close to them. Thiede gave him to them."

This struck me as absurd, if not a trifle hypocritical. For a race who professed to believe so passionately in freedom, how could they countenance something that had more than a whiff of slavery about it?

Arahal noticed my expression. "Velaxis is paid for his services," he said. I must have looked even more surprised. "He was once in Thiede's employ as a personal assistant," he continued. "No doubt Thiede realized the Hegemony would need efficient personnel here in Megalithica."

Velaxis conducted us into the main chamber of the pavilion. We hadn't waited long. Our presence was announced. I was nervous, expecting formality of the severest kind.

In the middle of the room was a large table. A tall, half-dressed har was sitting on it, peeling a piece of fruit with a knife, his boots were scuffed, and long, fair hair escaped from a black ribbon at the back of his neck. He had a face that was used to smiling and very white teeth. Another, standing next to him, sharing a joke (they were both laughing), was combing out his hair, which was wet.