The Wraeththu Chronicles (91 page)

When our horses picked their way carefully over the fallen stones of Fulminir's walls, I did not know what we would find within. Neither did I want to find out. I was dog-tired, my body ached and I was floating in a half-dream state that little could penetrate. I stared at the city around me and it was like walking through a painting. A child's painting of hell; red and black too stark, gaping faces. Eerily, the only sound was the hungry crackle of flames and the occasional thump of falling masonry. We rode by Varrish hara standing like imbeciles, utterly immobile, staring at the shattered walls. They did not see us. Like the people of the fairytale, their minds had frozen at the last instant before the spell was cast. Tendrils of blue-green light still investigated the dark, labyrinthine streets. Streets that were like tunnels, some of them disappearing into the ground like open sewers. Everything was damp and stilled.

Transfixed hara were caught in attitudes of bursting from open doorways, alarm forever painted across their panic-stricken faces, arms raised as if to ward off a blow. We passed a young har dressed in fine white silk, curled up in the gutter, gold at his ears and throat, his back branded and striped with weals. In a square, three rotting corpses hung from a scaffold, their blind, white, ruined eyes staring down implacably at the tumble of enchanted Varrs lying on the cobbles around them. In another place we found beautiful hara tied up with their own hair, their bodies naked and bruised. Varrish torturers stood grinning like stone around them. Others, who had perhaps only been passing by, had stopped to spectate. Their faces showed only mild interest.

Arahal pulled his horse to a halt; it skipped nervously sideways. He dismounted and stared up at the victims.

"Will they ever wake up?" I asked. My voice was blown away from me.

Arahal took a knife from his belt and sawed at the shining hair. He spoke three words and the wind sighed. Three bodies fell, slipped silently to the ground and twitched there feebly. Arahal rubbed his face, groaned, squatted and lifted the nearest har in his arms.

This was only the beginning. Fulminir had many other darker, fouler secrets to disclose.

Ashmael trotted his horse up beside me, an absurd blur of movement within the tomb. "Wake up, Swift," he said, with obscene cheerfulness.

This way. Follow me." He reached over and took hold of Afnina's rein by the bit-ring. I clung to the front of my saddle and we cantered through the ensorcelled streets of Fulminir.

Not even by those who have the most bizarre tastes in architecture could F'ulminir be called a handsome city. But its sheer size and ugliness do inspire a certain kind of awe. The buildings are built very close together and the majority of them are tall; narrow but with many stories. Evidence of extreme poverty was everywhere; the further we progressed toward the city center the more harrowing became the scenes we encountered. If ever I had doubted that Varrs ate Wraeththu and human flesh, now I was given ample proof. We found a harling crouched in a blind alley, gnawing on a dismembered limb, his eyes frozen in a glassy expression of defense.

Ponclast's palace squatted like a scrawny bird of prey at Fulminir's heart. We rode right into it. More scenes of darkness, more tableaux of despair. I tried hard to imagine the lively Gahrazel growing up in such a place, but it was impossible. There was a throne room, vast, black and vaulted. Seel and some of the others were waiting for us there.

"Is there anywhere here we can get hot coffee?" Ashmael asked, with abysmal cheerfulness.

Seel grimaced. "Save thoughts of refreshment until we are safely back in Galhea," he said. "You must find Ponclast."

Ashmael nodded. "We will. Come along, Swift."

We urged our horses up wide, splintered stairs, shadowy banners motionless above our heads. When we could ride no more, we walked. Ashmael dragged me. I was dressed only in a woollen cloak; my feet were bare, my skin still wet. I remember saying, "Is this my kingdom then? Is this what Thiede's given me?"

"We must find Ponclast," Ashmael answered, repeating Seel's words, pulling me forward by my wrist. We hurried along endless black corridors, shuttered doors punctuating them at intervals, terrifying in their silence. No windows, no light. A young har swathed in diaphanous veils, forever lifted in a breeze we could not feel, pressed his back to the wall, looking backwards. We walked past. He could not see us. I don't know what he saw, but his face was frozen in terror.

At length, we came out upon the battlements. In the open air, beneatha boiling sky shot with clear blue, we found them, Ponclast and his staff. They were leaning on the stone, looking down into the city streets, perhaps beyond them to the walls. On the stone floor was chalked a rough pentacle; magical implements were strewn carelessly around. From this point had the oil-smoke demon arisen. There were smears like soot and black liquid along the walls of the palace. A vague charnel stench still hung around. Ponclast's wide black cloak was lifted up behind him like wings, petrified in that position. I recognized him immediately. The first thing I thought was, Gahrazel's murderer, and this was followed closely, as more uncomfortable thoughts began to crowd my head, by: my father's seducer.

Ashmael pulled me to face him. "You realize I have to release him from the stasis, Swift."

I nodded. "As you must."

He spoke three slow words that sounded and smelled like ashes and lime, and then suddenly Ponclast jerked upright. He was so surprised, he nearly fell forward over the battlements. He uttered an exclamation and turned. I was a stranger to him. He did not recognize me, but he knew immediately that we were Gelaming and that we had defeated him. In one swift, supple movement he reached for the gun at his hip, but Ashmael had

anticipated that, raising his hand, calmly, languidly. It was enough. Now Ponclast's arms were frozen again, his legs paralyzed. His eyes were wild. Any chance he'd get he'd try to kill us, and then keep on killing. He enjoyed it. Neither was he afraid of death.

Anger spurted through me in a hot, quick wave. "What can you do with him?" I cried. "You can only kill him! It's the only way to stop him!" Ponclast looked at me directly for the first time. He almost smiled. "Yes, I am Swift," I said in a cold, low voice. "I am Terzian's son. I am with the Gelaming and now your kingdom is mine."

For a moment, Ponclast was expressionless. Then he laughed. It was the most mirthless sound I had ever heard. Had he laughed like that as his son writhed in the final agony of death? "Terzian's puppy!" he boomed, tears of laughter running down his sooty face. "I was right about you. Weakness on my part not to get rid of you when I had the chance. So now you dally with those who destroyed your father—"

"No," I interrupted. "You destroyed him! You!"

"You think so?" Ponclast drawled. "I gave him everything."

"Including evil."

"Including a thirst for evil. He loved power and he loved what we would do together. You never knew him, puppy; he was always mine."

I thought, I will silence you, pig! I could not bear the sound of his voice. Before Ashmael could stop me, I lunged forward, taking Ashmael's knife from his belt, swift, swiftly. I lunged forward and struck at that hateful smile and then there was another smile on Ponclast's face, this one gaping red and toothless. He looked surprised.

"Swift!" Ashmael pulled me back. "That is not the way! Stop!"

I struggled away from him and threw the knife at the floor. "There is no way," I said bitterly. "No right or wrong; not here."

I turned away. I walked back into the palace. Ponclast shouted empty threats behind me. I did not look around.

It seemed I walked for hours, always downwards, seeking the throne room where I thought Seel might still be. I didn't know exactly what Thiede expected me to do with Fulminir, but at that moment I was planning a thousand ways of pulling it down, burning it and mutilating Ponclast's elite dogs. It seemed such an anticlimax to find Ponclast like that. We should have fought. I should have sent him plummeting over the battlements; sent him to a bloody, crushing death. Gelaming do not like to kill . . .

Eventually, I came out into a courtyard, down a narrow, snaking stairway. I looked around myself. I was lost. In the middle of the yard was a well. Sitting on the well's wall was a splendid figure. It was Thiede. In that place of utter darkness he shone like an angel. He was an angel. Uriel for vengeance, clad in silver steel and silk, his hair like a nimbus, his eyes deepest black. I could see his long feet in thin sandals, the toenails curved like claws and lacquered with the luster of pearl. If ever I had thought our race resembled humanity, looking at Thiede dispelled that illusion. He smiled at me. For a face so beautiful, his teeth are quite long.

"Once upon a time," he said. "I lived in a city like this. It may even have been this city. . . . Do you like stories, Swift?" I limped over to him. My feet were cut. Thiede leaned over and hauled up the bucket from the well. "Come to me," he said. I sat on the wall beside him and he tore a strip of silk from his sleeve and, with the water, bathed the blood and soot from my toes.

"All lives are stories," I said. "To somebody, they're stories." He nodded thoughtfully. "Of course, this is true. I enjoy making up my own stories, though."

"As you made up mine?"

"Yes. I construct the plot, place the characters and then they tend to become headstrong and run away from me. I lose control over them. Usually, it is because of Love, a thing I once sought to eradicate in Wraeththu. Now I'm not so sure I can, or even if I want to."

"It surprises me you say this."

"It surprises me too, Swift the Varr."

I shivered. "After today, the name of Varrs should never be spoken again. The tribe should perish, the memory of it should die ..."

"Is this your first decree?" He wiped his hands fastidiously.

"What are you going to do with the people of Fulminir?" I asked him. "And the city itself; what will you do with that?"

"Isn't that up to you now, Swift?"

"No, I don't think so."

Thiede looked beyond me at the dark mass of Ponclast's palace rising around us. We were still nowhere near the ground. The wind was chill."Do with them?" he mused. "Well, it is a problem. They are no use to us in this world, that's for sure, but neither would we be thanked for sending such black souls into the next! Come now, what do you suggest?" "I suggest, Lord Thiede, that we make a deep hole in the Earth and freeze them all forever and throw them into it. Then we should close the pit. I would enjoy particularly stamping down the soil." "But nothing would ever grow there." "We could pave it with stone."

"Hmm ... a possible solution, I suppose!" He smiled at me, which I returned. "There is one place you have not thought of, Swift." He stood up and began to walk across the yard, beckoning me to follow. "Another place . . . ?"

"Yes." He put his arm around my shoulder. "Another place. My forest, the forest of

best-forgotten mirrors."

"But would people be safe from them there?"

"You should know that they would. You've been there."

"Then it should be properly named."

"Of course. I have been pondering upon it, waiting for you here. What do you think of this: Gebaddon? A marriage of the realms of hell. Not this world, not the next, but somewhere in between where the only things they can damage are each other. Of course, there is the possibility, however slight, that they might discover enlightenment there."

"A possibility, I suppose," I agreed, "but it would be unsporting to deny it to them."

Thiede laughed and squeezed my shoulder. "I chose well when I chose you, my dear."

"Chose me for what exactly, my lord? I still don't understand quite what you require of me."

The darkness of the palace had swallowed us again. We walked along a narrow corridor where there were open doors to either side. I did not want to look into the rooms beyond. There was no sound.

"Your purpose, Swift, is to govern for Pellaz and myself in Megalithica. Of course, you will need a full-size staff which will come together in time, and also I suspect

there will be quite a lot for you to learn. Seel will be a great help to you; he understands about these things."

"Will we have to live in Fulminir?" I asked, aghast. It was the Vanish capital of Megalithica, after all.

"No," Thiede reassured. "Galhea must be expanded. We envisage that it will become the major city of northern Megalithica. It is more central anyway. Fulminir is best forgotten. I think you will have to come to Immanion for a short while. You may talk with Pellaz there ..."

"Thiede," I said. "Who are you?"

He stopped walking, surprised. He inclined his head enquiringly. "What I mean is, Pell is supposed to be Tigron of Wraeththu. Where do you fit into things? He answers to you; that is obvious. What position is higher than the Tigron's?"

Thiede smiled. "Only one," he answered, and, putting his hand upon my back, propelled me forward once more.

"Few know my identity," he continued, after a while. "It is best that way."

"Greater than the Tigron?"

"Wraeththu is mine, are mine. I've been around a long time, Swift. Since the beginning."

"The very beginning?" I squeaked, enlightenment dawning slowly.