Anna von Wessen (20 page)

XX:

Souls

W
eary from the previous day’s ordeal, Anna slept very late. She woke, as she so often and irritatingly did, to the sound of Greyson’s tinny voice raised in greeting.

“Good day, my Anna!” he exclaimed. “Wake up, there! There you are.”

“What are you doing here, Greyson?”

“Rousing you up! And a splendid job I’ve done. Let’s see – what do you want to do today?”

“I want to sleep. Please get out.”

“Ah, but that doesn’t sound like much fun! Let’s see. Shall we play at billiards? We’ve not done that for a while. No? Hmmm. More target practice? Or how about a walk outside? Do you want to go for a walk, Anna?”

“I do not want to go
anywhere,
you little pest! Go and torment someone else!”

She paused here; and looked dubiously at Greyson’s messy head. “And I wonder,” she added, “would it hurt you so very much, to comb your hair every once in a while?”

“I like it as it is.”

“You look like a porcupine.”

“I like porcupines. They’re right jolly-looking things.”

Presently, though – quite as on the evening before – their conversation was interrupted by a knock at the door. Anna asked again who called; and again Vaya answered.

“Well – come in, I suppose. It doesn’t seem I’ll be going back to sleep.”

Vaya stepped from the dark hall, into the bright light of Anna’s chamber, and shielded her eyes for a moment against the sun-stream at the window. But she made no comment upon it, and only blinked several times, before making to approach the bed.

“How are you feeling today?” she asked.

“Very well.”

“I’m ever so glad to hear it.”

Anna cocked her head to one side, and narrowed her eyes, the better to scrutinise Vaya’s face. It seemed, though, that she was sincere.
             

“Tell me,” said Anna. “For truly, Vaya Eleria, I do not wish to think the worst of you. But why does it seem that you have changed so very much – so very suddenly?”

“It’s a reasonable question, I suppose. Probably my answer won’t seem enough to you; and probably it will do little to make you think better of me. I
have
no answer, really. I simply felt that I should change.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“You lie to me.”

“I don’t.”

“Then perhaps you lie to yourself.”

“Perhaps I do.”

All this time they spoke, you should know, Greyson was staring quite helplessly, and quite shamelessly, into Vaya’s face. After Vaya had spoken these last words, it seemed she began to have a sense of his eyes upon her. She looked to him, and scowled.

“Why do you gawk at me, Greyson Menuch?”

“Oh, no!” said Greyson. “Gawk I don’t. I only gaze – gaze because you are so very beautiful.”

“Greyson,” Anna said quietly, reaching for his leg to pinch it. “Mind yourself.”

But Greyson seemed not to hear her. He only appeared to sink a little into the floor, and thereby lose a few inches of his height (which, by the by, had not been so very significant to begin with). As if stricken with a premonition of the exact magnitude of his next words’ foolishness, Anna went again to twist his flesh between her fingers. But, alas – he could not be stopped.

“Vaya Eleria,” he boomed suddenly, “I do think that I love you.”

Both Vaya and Anna stared silently into his blank, swooning face. It was a moment before Vaya responded to this outrageous outburst; and when she did, her reply was quite as gentle as you may have predicted.

“Take yourself from my sight, you slimy little urchin,” she barked. “And do it quickly – ere I do as Anna does, and take your whole nose off in my hand.”

As if gaining consciousness after a faint, Greyson all at once shook himself, and looked about as though he were not quite sure where he happened to stand. He glanced down at Anna, and then turned his eyes to Vaya; whereupon he gave a shrill little squeak, and shifted from the room.

Anna expected for Vaya to make some comment, now, upon the appalling gall and senselessness of her friend. She was surprised, then, when she said nothing at all; but merely settled herself in a chair by the bed. It was several minutes before she spoke.

“Love!” she scoffed at last. “It is impossible for a Lumarian to love. What a dolt!”

This, of course, was by no means the direction in which Anna had expected Vaya to proceed. Though she had several responses at the ready, to counter anything Vaya might have said about Greyson’s peculiar brand of idiocy (which Anna did not even go so far as to claim was nonexistent; but merely that, to her, it was simply an annoying furtherance of endearment), she was wholly unprepared to confabulate on such an obscure topic. So she merely asked:

“Why?”

Vaya would not look at her. She answered, rather, with her face turned towards the bright window. The sunlight, now, seemed not to irk her as it had done before. She tilted her head back a bit, so that the light might better touch her face and throat; and she looked so serene in that moment, that Anna was half startled by the strength of her words.

“We are dead, Anna!” she said. “Our hearts are made of ice. We do not breathe; we do not weep. We have no souls.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“Well, it’s not for you to think,” said Vaya, even more forcefully. “It is a thing that has been known for thousands of years. It is not a debate.”

She gave pause, and twisted her lips into a dark frown. “Ephram says he loves me.
Said
he did,” she muttered; and though her quiet voice served more as an extension of her tormented thoughts than as a conduit to conversation, of course Anna heard her. “Love, love, love,” she added in a whisper. “What a strange word! I’ve used that word. Do I mean it when I say it . . .?”

Anna thought little before she spoke; did not, even, think to touch a toe out into the cold and roiling water, before following with her whole foot and leg. When she
thought back on it, she wondered seriously if it denoted some beginning of madness on her part. Judge for yourself, when you hear that she said:

“And did you not love the one you died for? It only seems such a very great sacrifice to make, for someone you did not love.”

Vaya made no answer; did not even look with any degree of astonishment towards her questioner; but indeed her face went very strange. She did not rise, in order to storm from the room, as Anna certainly expected her to do. Her black hair hung like the first cloud of a tempest round her face; her eyes were fixed like screws to the floor, where apparently there was something writ which even increased the effect of Anna’s inquiry; her countenance was sapped of every last vestige of the strength of her mighty will. Anna remembered that this was how she had looked, too, the night before last, in the shadows of her own desolate chamber. No sooner had Anna realised this, however, than the chair before her eyes became empty. Yet somehow Vaya remained behind –  like a trapped ghost that kept with her long into the night.

~

There has always been great debate – contrary to what Vaya said – as to whether or not a Lumarian has a soul. Some argue no, as the race was created by Satan, who cannot give souls; some say no, because a born Lumarian was never alive; and likewise a transformed Lumarian would lose his God-given soul when he is changed. But some argue that they do, for to be exact they are
undead;
and if they are not wholly dead, then therefore they
must
be, to some extent, alive. Therefore God grants them the soul that the devil could not – and in so doing, gives them a conscience, and the still-small voice of the heavenly Father in their motionless hearts.

Some say that members of the Lumaria have been known to acknowledge this soul. If they were to do such a thing, then of course it would be an impossibility for them to eat human flesh: the very casings of their brother-and-sister souls. Would they not think it an abomination, to eat a fellow Lumarian? Well – then how to eat the fellow possessor of a soul? For this reason they would learn to subsist on the flesh of animals, just as all the other races do. But this theory, or the truth of it, has never been confirmed – because if a Lumarian were to acknowledge his soul, he would just as soon be banished, or executed. Therefore there are only stories, and legends on this topic.

But certainly Anna pondered it deeply, this long lonely night, which seemed to her somehow longer and lonelier than many of the nights which had preceded it. After Vaya left her, she lay all the day thinking; and then lay all the night wondering, if she was indeed going mad. To her it seemed her soul
must live
. To her, it seemed that it must lie somewhere there, between the same bones that had housed it when she first came into the world. If it was not there anymore, well – how was it that
she
was here still? Was her soul not the hidden battery that charged the device? Could it possibly be, that she lived and moved as she did – and yet had no soul to drive her? What was a soul, exactly? It only seemed to her, that if she did not have one, there would be no chance at all – no chance at all that she might . . .

She pushed these thoughts away with the heel of her hand, as she ground it viciously into her temple. A chance for what, she wondered? What thing did she think of, which scurried away at her smallest efforts to shine a light upon it? What was this thing
that plagued her? Perhaps it was not a dream, then. Perhaps this thing was real; and perhaps it made joint edges with those other things – with the viscose-like stuff that oozed from her broken leg; with the hunger that came like a strange fire; with the sickness that visited her on Thayer Street; with the shadow of passing time, that looked out at her clearly from behind the mirror.

Did these things have to do with a soul, she wondered? Was she dead or alive? If those pains which visited her sometimes, had naught at all to with her heart (for how could they? – her heart was frozen), with what exactly had they to do? Were they there at all? Or were they merely phantoms?

And what of her? Was
she
there at all?

Or was she merely a phantom?

Episode IV

XXI:

The Babes

T
hese thoughts crowding round Anna’s mind, pressing and writhing and jostling this way and that, till her very brain burnt with the friction – these thoughts allowed her no rest. She spent all that day and night lying upon her back, with her eyes trained on the dark and distant ceiling, and the whispers of voices in her head. 

Crammed down so very tightly within this dark morass, and needing very desperately a distraction, she was almost disappointed by Greyson’s failure to come to her in the morning. Always he came; but this day he did not. An ill portent, perhaps? Or just a demonstration of his incorrigible laziness? Surely Anna would have liked to assume the latter; and truly, she could not disparage him much, still and silent as she herself had lain for long hours alone. She could hardly find the will to move, so little did she want to confront the world without. She felt much as she had felt, those first days of Greyson’s imprisonment, when it seemed only her in that great cold castle. Now, though, there were sounds and movements enough to disprove this theory, ringing all through the floors below. Anna listened to them stolidly, never eliciting the faintest symptom of interest; even when there began what seemed a very large commotion out in the grounds.

But this last and greatest sound, too, finally died away, and removed its grating edges from her ears, so that she lay as oblivious as before. Darkness had even come to fall again, before there appeared the smallest cause to shake her mysterious reverie aside.

When the knock came at the door, she knew of course that it could not be Greyson who exhibited such politeness. She turned her head, ever so slightly, to the left, and watched the doorknob very carefully.

“Anna?”

For the third time – for the third day – it was Vaya Eleria. But it seemed she was not come now on her own business.

“Anna?” she repeated. “Are you all right?”

Anna said nothing.

“My father asked me to see about you,” Vaya went on. “Are you even there?”

She paused for a moment; and then resumed:

“Well, if you are – my father wishes to speak to you. Something happened today.”

There was a brief space of silence, wherein Anna continued her watch on the one side of the door, and Vaya Eleria stood quietly on the other. If Anna could have seen through the wood, she would have known that Vaya lingered there with a most puzzling expression upon her face, and her hand hovering just over the knob. It was as though she were suddenly only another plastic piece in the great game of physical space, which is daily played through the swapping of any number of minute compromises; and as though she were no longer capable of shifting directly into Anna’s chamber, if she so desired; but was rather compelled to follow within the limits of social decorum, the likes of which she had certainly never observed before. Unused, then, to the feeling, and mystified by its presence, she turned quickly away from the door, and went hurrying down the checkerboard of the hall, still playing the maddening game as she leapt from square to square.

But Anna, of course, knew none of this. She only listened, as Vaya’s voice died away; and then turned her face back to the ceiling, as the light departing footsteps began to sound in the corridor.

~

It was Ephram himself who came to her next. He rapped twice upon the door; but when Anna did not answer him, he shifted into the room.

At his appearance, Anna leapt off the bed, and stood on her two feet as she had not done in more than eight-and-forty hours.

“I sent for you, Anna. Why did you not come?”

“I’m sorry, Ephram.”

“Are you not feeling well?”

“I’m fine now.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“All right, then. You see, Anna – it is imperative that we gather directly, and have us a conference. Will you come with me?”

“Yes, Ephram.”

He came to put his hand on her shoulder, as they shifted together from the room. When they had arrived in his study, he gave her shoulder a squeeze, and asked her if she was
quite
sure she was all right?

“Yes, Ephram.”

“Come and sit, then.”

He led her to a chair placed between Vaya and Valo. The siblings sat with their faces averted towards opposite walls, and appeared adamant not to look at one another. A father they shared, but nothing more. Different were they in every way. They were of two sexes; two strengths; two minds. And yet there was that single thing, that temperament of fire which branded them both, and made the space wherein Anna seated herself almost hot, despite the fact that it was placed betwixt two bodies of ice.

To turn her mind from this discomfort, Anna looked round once for Byron Evigan; but he was nowhere to be seen.

“If you are seeking the steward,” Ephram said, “then I am afraid you shall not find him. He has departed the castle.”

“Departed the castle?”

“Entirely.”

“But why?”

Ephram laughed softly. “Come, Anna,” he said. “Surely you can guess the reason.”

“Your last conversation, I take it, was even more unpleasant than you anticipated?”             

“You take it rightly. But no matter – no matter. He has run to Josev of Wisthane, I believe, in an effort to have my jurisdiction overturned. Why he seeks an appeal in
that
quarter, certainly I do not know. If there is anyone with the power to do so, who will challenge my right to the throne – well, that someone is not Josev.” He shook his head, and sighed. “A pity for poor Byron. I believe he is feeling rather stretched and stepped upon at present.”

“Doubtless.”

“But you think that I acted rightly, Anna? You think I chose fairly?”

“Without question.”

There came something of a groan, then, from Anna’s right hand; and she looked to see Valo, with his arms crossed tight over his broad chest, and his face turned childishly away from her. He was angry, because Anna had not spoken to him in days. He was impatient, now, because his father asked
her
whether he did right.

Anna prepared to make some heated retort, but was stayed by the sudden sounding of Vaya’s voice.

“Have you something caught in your throat, brother?” she demanded.

“I am not your brother,” Valo returned. “You are a vile ogre, Vaya Eleria – and I’ve nothing to do with you.”

“Valo!” Ephram reprimanded. “You will not talk that way.”

“Then I will not talk at all,” Valo said petulantly.

“Would you like to leave the room, Valo?”

A long moment of silence. Then, very sullenly:

“No.”

“Watch your words, then, my boy.”

“Yes, Father.”

Anna turned from Valo, to look at Vaya. When she met her eyes, she was greeted with the pleasant surprise of a smile.

This was the limit. There was no doubt; she had gone mad.

“Anyway,” said Ephram; “there is, after all, a reason why you are all here. As Anna, however, is unaware of it, bear with me as I briefly explain it.”

He looked to Anna, perhaps with something of a curious expression, which showed very plainly how strange he thought it, that she
was
unaware. At Thayer Street, at the centre of activity, always there was Anna to be found; but now, on this occasion – whatever occasion it happened to be – Anna had been absent. She recollected the marked noises which she had heard; and certainly Ephram did not doubt that she had heard. Therefore he wondered. But he made no remark.

“A terrible thing happened today,” he continued. “The nursery was attacked.”

Now, it seems that so far in our story, we have failed to describe to you this area of Castle Drelho. But the reason for the place was simple. You remember the conversation that passed between Anna and Greyson, on their first night in the castle? Good. Now, you recall when Greyson spoke of Wolach? The subject of that Narkul was recounted a little, and was followed by Greyson’s belief, that the wolves’ numbers increased far too quickly for the Lumaria to triumph against him. But of course this was not merely Geryson’s opinion; as you will recollect that King Devin sounded the same sentiment at Night House. There simply seemed no way to match the rate of Lumarian propagation to that of the wolves.

And so a new system was devised about ten years ago. Every twelvemonth since then, a certain number of human women were captured unto every Lumarian household. Each of them was impregnated with Lumarian seed, and kept carefully for the three-
month gestation period. Either before or after the birth they died naturally; and then were made double-use of, as edibles.

The nursery of Drelho was situated on the twelfth storey, the highest of the castle, for purposes of better safekeeping. Directly beside it was the “prenatal ward,” if you will, where there were one hundred human women locked away for precisely one quarter of every year. This was all done in a very exact and timely manner, with gestation taking place from January through March; one hundred infants, most of which survived under the heedful attentions of the Lumarian midwives, being born in the last week of that latter month; and those same infants being afterwards moved to the nursery, where they were kept for an entire year, or until the next birthing-month came about. In smaller houses than Drelho, of course, the number of infants produced was much lower: sometimes fifty, or thirty; fifteen, or even a mere five. Even if there were space available for more than these (which in most cases there was), still the quota was determined by the number of hands which were present, to see to all those little Lumaria.

But Lumarian gestation is a complicated thing. Occasionally a fetus will begin to feed upon the insides of its surrogate mother, so that many ministrations need be made, with the human woman kept under surveillance sometimes twenty-four hours a day, to avoid her premature death. At other times the fetus gains strength too quickly; and the surrogate is quite like a little housecat, attempting to see through the gestation of a Great Dane. The fetus uses its muscular arms to hammer away at the surrogate’s stomach, so that in some cases an actual hole is made, and the fetus comes tumbling out, all in a pool of blood and entrails. Most times these fetuses do not survive.

But anyway. Of those smaller English houses, there were now some one-hundred-and-fifty, which all produced those fifty or less infants per year. Josev of Wisthane’s Black Manor supplied the same hundred as Drelho. Unto Night House, however, there were taken each January one thousand women; and born in March one thousand Lumarian children.

The procedure was followed to the letter, in each of the countries which belonged to the Night Council. The approximate sum of all six countries was fifty-five-thousand per annum. As Koro said, the last significant Lumarian state to drop from the Council was that of Romania. This having taken place just before the nurseries were established, there had never been a greater output than fifty-five-thousand. The children produced by the sires of the wild Lumaria cannot be included in this figure, as those rogue creatures could not ever be counted upon to obey the call of the Night Council. And even if they could – to them the institution of war was far less important than that of survival, and the concept of “legacy” was not one ever-present in their minds. The wild ones, rather, had a tendency merely to live, and then to die, without ever having left behind any proof that they existed.

But consider. The Lumaria are a powerful and indomitable race, to be sure; and yet their numbers, in comparison with those of the wolves and the humans, are somewhat paltry. Take it into your head, that every year there are more than four million human infants born into the world. Now, perhaps the numbers of the Narken are not quite so high as that; but be assured that they are no less than fifty percent. Understand, too, that the population of the Endai is even greater than the combination of Narken and Voranu.

Tally the number of Narken, then, at two million per annum. The propagation of the Lumaria rings in at only slightly more than one thirty-sixth that amount! They are stronger and faster than the wolves; but still this discrepancy is a significant one. And then imagine that perhaps, in the thick of things, they were to lose the tense confidence of the Endai, and suddenly find them their opponents. Tally that as a greater thing, than doubling the number of Narken altogether!

Therefore, this new system of childbirth could not be considered anywhere near sufficient, despite the fact that the children gained strength rapidly. By the time they left the care of the nurses and midwives, they were a full year old, and were unbelievably powerful. Any single one of them could, when in an especial rage, overtake physically three grown human men. They could at this time, too, all walk upon their own two legs, and were well on their way to learning their words. Yet still they grew at about the rate of human children; and were not considered full grown, till around the age of twenty or so. Still, their individual houses could not be expected to hold them all, at those numbers each year; and after the first five years, the larger houses began to send their children away, with a number of the adults, so as to set up new houses. Some of the smaller houses were forced to do this after only the very first year. In extreme cases, though, children of merely the age of six could be depended upon as sturdy soldiers, who were wholly capable of defending their own homes.