The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure (36 page)

Flick emerged from below deck, with Mima following, her face set into a surly expression. She had her arms folded and everything about her was closed in and hostile. She would never forgive Terez for what he’d said and done in the past and she couldn’t forgive herself for what she’d done, either. Lileem wished Mima would let it all go. Terez had been denied a life with the Uigenna, but surely that was for the best. What did Mima have to feel bad about now? Terez did not appear unhappy. He didn’t appear anything. Well, perhaps, there were reasons for regret, after all.

‘What’s so important?’ Flick said, sitting down beside Terez.

Terez held out his hand to Lileem. ‘The carving,’ he said.

Lileem handed it to him and he passed it to Flick.

‘Somehar else is inventing gods,’ Lileem said.

Flick examined the carving. ‘It’s well crafted, but what’s so important about it? If other hara are creating dehara, it’s not that surprising.’ He held out the carving to Terez.

‘Look again,’ Terez said. ‘That is the Tigron of Immanion, the king of the Gelaming, if you like. The ruler of all Wraeththu.’

‘Well, they were bound to do that sooner or later,’ Flick said. ‘They think highly of themselves. Personally, I don’t have a king and never will. I won’t buy into Gelaming power fantasies.’

‘His name is Pellaz-har-Aralis,’ Terez said. ‘The carving is stylised, of course, so don’t look for resemblances.’

Flick glanced again at the carving, then fixed Terez with a stare. ‘What are you suggesting?’

‘I travel widely in this land,’ Terez said. ‘I get to hear many things. I make sure I do. I’ve never stopped searching for my brothers, and my feet led me to what was once Varrish territory. It was there I met a har who came from Almagabra. He was Gelaming, attached in some small capacity to the noble house of Parasiel in Galhea, the home of Swift the Varr, now presumably Swift of the Parasiel, who has earned himself fame as a Gelaming lap dog. The har I met told me that Thiede had created himself a king and that his name is Pellaz.’

‘No,’ Flick said. ‘Don’t think it. It’s impossible.’

‘No it isn’t,’ Ulaume said, in a low voice. ‘You know that. This is what everything has been leading to. It makes sense of your story, Flick, about Pell’s inception and Thiede. This was the plan no har knew about. He never died. Cal was deceived.’

‘He couldn’t have been,’ Flick said. ‘It was too raw and real for him. I don’t believe it.’

‘But you have seen Pell in visions,’ Mima said. Her arms were unfolded now, though her skin looked sallow. ‘He spoke to you, and Ulaume never believed Pell was dead. By Aruhani, this is it! He sent you to us, Flick. He sent you to care for us, because he is a Wraeththu king, all-powerful. Because he
can
do it.’

‘Then he could have come for you himself,’ Flick said. ‘Don’t jump on this, Mima. There could be any number of explanations. Not least that Thiede just decided to call this king he made Pellaz. It could be anyhar.’

‘I agree,’ Terez said, ‘so I investigated further. It transpires that a har named Cal went to Galhea a few years back and that it’s rumoured he once had a connection with the Tigron. That is more than coincidence.’

‘When I felt Pell die,’ Ulaume said, ‘and when your friend Orien had that psychic episode, it must have been the exact moment when Thiede took Pell away from Cal. We misinterpreted what we felt. It was a transformation, not death.’

‘Cal burned the remains,’ Flick said. ‘I’m sure he didn’t make it up. You didn’t see him, talk to him. He knew what he saw and experienced, and it
was
Pell’s death. He had half his head blown off. There can be little mistake under those circumstances. I know Cal visited the Varrs. He did so with Pell. The stories are getting mixed up, that’s all.’

‘No, this was more recent,’ Terez said, ‘certainly since he murdered your friend at Saltrock.’

‘Why are you trying to explain this away?’ Mima said. ‘Flick, it is the answer. It’s why you and Ulaume were drawn to us.’

‘But if it were true, then surely Pell would have tried to make contact with you himself,’ Flick said. ‘Mima, please think about this. Don’t give in to wishful thinking. If he lives, he’s obviously not thinking about you, or Terez, or Ulaume or me. Not even Cal. Maybe he wanted this. Maybe he was in on it from the start. But, if he is this Tigron, he doesn’t care about you. You must be dead to him, as I am, as we all are.’

Lileem was watching Mima’s face. She noticed the way Mima recoiled from Flick’s words. They were harsh, but true, and despite everything, Mima was no fool.

‘Flick’s right,’ Terez said. ‘It would once have been my instinct to believe this fully, without question, but now I am wiser. I’ll go to Immanion and find out for myself, and if there is any truth in this story I will find you and tell you.’

‘Hara don’t just ‘go’ to Immanion,’ Flick said. ‘You must know that. Many don’t even believe it exists. The Gelaming create legends about themselves, and one of those legends is that nohar finds the city unless the Gelaming invite them there.’

‘I will discover what is truth and what is myth,’ Terez said. ‘I don’t need invitations. You cannot do it, because you need to remain here in hiding. But think of this, if Pell
does
live and he
is
Tigron, then he could provide the protection you need for Mima and Lileem. This must be important to you all.’

‘If he lives and is Tigron, it’s my thought that he’s abandoned all aspects of his past,’ Flick said. ‘I wouldn’t count on an offer of protection. He could have done that any time. He might not even acknowledge you as kin.’

‘We
are
protected,’ Lileem said abruptly. ‘We don’t need anyhar else to do it. We have ourselves.’ She was filled with a fear of her life disintegrating around her. She didn’t want change. There was nothing that needed changing. Whatever happened that she couldn’t handle herself, Flick, Ulaume and Mima would deal with it.

‘I have to agree with Flick,’ Mima said, ‘even though it hurts to do it. I want Pell to be alive so much, yet if he is, I have to face that he has no interest in us. If he wanted to find us, he could have done, but as yet, he clearly hasn’t bothered trying.’

Lileem was surprised that Mima had changed her mind so quickly, but then again she could see in Mima’s face all those difficult feelings she couldn’t straighten out. Mima felt abandoned, all over again.

‘I hope to all the dehara it isn’t true,’ Flick said in an uncharacteristically cruel tone. ‘Because if it is, then it means Orien died for nothing and I lost Seel for nothing. Cal went insane for nothing and has blood on his hands for eternity. If Pell lives, he’s as much responsible for what happened in Saltrock as Cal was.’

Lileem opened her mouth to offer some comfort, because she could see how upset Flick was but, before she could speak, he threw down the carving, leapt off the boat onto the bank and marched off into the trees. For a moment, all was silent.

‘I knew this news would be difficult,’ Terez said. ‘I had thought of the implications in it too.’

‘You must find out if it is true though,’ Mima said. ‘I have to know.’

‘I will do what I can,’ Terez said.

Lileem picked up the little carving Flick had discarded and held it out to Terez.

‘Keep it,’ he said. ‘I have no need for it.’

Lileem put the carving of the Tigron in a drawer in her cabin, although she liked to take it out at night, when she was alone, and study it. Not for one moment did she ever doubt that what Terez had told them was true. Neither did she think that Pellaz had coldly and consciously abandoned his surviving kin and friends. She was sure he just didn’t know about them, that other things occupied his attention. If he had truly died and been resurrected, perhaps he couldn’t even remember his human family. Everyhar was reacting in a very personal way, but Lileem had never had business with Pellaz. She had no expectations of him, and no disappointments in him. If anything, the idea of him intrigued her greatly. All her life, she’d heard about him, and the way he affected others made him all the more fascinating. Lileem liked both Mima and Terez very much, and considered them to be beautiful, dashing and daring creatures. It made sense to her that a Cevarro should end up as king of all Wraeththu. It was terrible to her that any of the family had been killed, because she was sure they had all been special people. Flick, Ulaume and Mima lashed out against Pellaz in hurt and resentment. Terez merely set himself the task of discovering the truth. Lileem herself simply decided to wait. This was a story that had yet to reach its conclusion.

Flick would not return to Rofalor’s house for more information about harlings, so the morning following Terez’s arrival ‘Esmeraldarine’ left the Unneah settlement and headed north. Terez departed before they left, riding one of the Uigenna horses he’d stolen years before. Lileem stood on top of the boat and watched him gallop off into the morning, where an early mist hugged the ground.
I wouldn’t mind being like him,
she thought,
not if I could look like that, riding a horse. Not if I could be a walker of shadows, like he is, and never be flustered, unsure or frightened.

‘Hey!’ Flick called to her. ‘Are you dreaming? There’s work to do!’

‘Sorry.’

Flick looked at her strangely and she found her neck was burning.

It began two weeks after Terez had come to them, two weeks after the conversation at Rofalor’s. Lileem was ashore one afternoon, walking in overgrown fields next to an abandoned farm. Feral horses galloped in the sunshine and the air was full of insects, murmuring lazily in the summer warmth. Lileem walked to a gigantic oak and sat down against the trunk. She leaned back and closed her eyes, breathing deeply, absorbing all the scents of the land. Why had she ever been afraid? She was a part of the world, at one with it. She could feel every ray of sunlight as it fell on her skin, coming down through the softly rustling leaves overhead.

‘Lileem!’

She opened her eyes at once. There was nohar there, and yet the voice had sounded so close. She jumped up and glanced around herself, but the field was empty of all but horses, which had stopped cavorting around and now cropped the grass nearby, their tails swishing to ward off the flies. It must have been one of the others, putting out a mind call to her, but it hadn’t felt like that at all. She had heard her name spoken, not in her head, but with her physical ears. Neither had she recognised the voice.

This could be a haunted place. Humans had once owned the ruined farm. They may have been slaughtered in this field. Unnerved, Lileem ran through the sunlight to the shelter of trees and the woodland path that led back to the river. Just when the world feels right and good, something peculiar happens to remind you that nothing is certain.

Lileem didn’t mention anything to her companions about what had happened, but for the rest of the day she felt slightly disorientated. Her ears had started to ring, and it was a strange ringing that sounded like the distant lilt of a choir. If she put her hands over her ears in order to concentrate on it and hear it properly, it went away. But when she was speaking or others were making noise around her, she could hear it again, faint and insistent within her.

That night, she was plagued by troubling dreams. All of them involved voices shouting her name. They were calling to her desperately:
come to us!
But she didn’t know who or what they were. In the single word of her name, repeated endlessly, she perceived the message:
you belong with us. Come quickly! It is time.

She wondered if it could be her hostling, and in the morning felt she had to confide in Flick about the dreams. She asked him to go for a walk with her in the woods, because for some unknown reason, she didn’t want Ulaume or Mima to hear what she had to say. Flick listened to her account of the call in the field the previous day and the events of the night. He did not interrupt, which was unusual, and unsettling.

‘Is it the Kakkahaar who was my hostling calling to me?’ Lileem asked, making a conscious effort not to wring her hands together. She couldn’t stop shivering.

‘I don’t know,’ Flick said. ‘I doubt it. Maybe it was just a bad dream.’

Lileem could tell he didn’t believe this, because his expression was deeply worried. ‘Is it…’ she began. ‘Is it the…
other
thing? Is this what happens? A call from somehar I don’t know, the har who’s supposed to…’

‘No!’ Flick said quickly. ‘I’m sure not. It could be something to do with the landscape here. We’ll move on. Let me know if anything else happens.’ He paused. ‘There haven’t been any other changes, have there.’

Lileem’s face burned. ‘No. I’d tell you.’

Flick nodded. ‘OK. Don’t worry. It’s probably nothing.’

The walked back to the boat in silence and Lileem considered how much Flick had changed since she first met him. It was as if she were seeing him for the first time. He no longer appeared so fey and vulnerable. He was strong and his hands were calloused. They rarely talked of the dehara nowadays, although Lileem had kept up her devotions to them privately. Flick had lost faith in all that was wondrous, as had Ulaume. Flick had always believed the world would be fair to him, and it hadn’t been. What had started in Saltrock had only been compounded by the events with Terez and the Uigenna. Flick never spoke of those things either, but sometimes Lileem could feel self-loathing coming off him like a black flame.