For a moment longer, in those final moments, he stared at me deeply. What did he see? A Uigenna wastrel? A used-up kanene? A murderer? Or did he see Opalexian's initiate? He was afraid.
"Show me then," he said, and I opened up my mind to let him look within me and learn what I knew. She that taught it lived there. If he'd been ignorant of her existence, as, at last, I felt he must, he did not let me see it. He extended his hand.
"Let me look at you again," he said, and drew me toward him. He smiled sadly. "One of my children. Every har is one of my children. Have I been a harsh father, a useless one?"
"Neither, but you have not been a mother either." He shook his head. His last moments. He looked around the temple, loving it, smelling it, absorbing it, afraid he would lose it for eternity. Until the moment of extinction, there is no real proof for any of us that life extends beyond it. "Pell is waiting to love you," he said. "That, in itself, has been an act of worship for him. I envy you. I envy you everything."
"You shouldn't."
He smiled more widely, a sparkle coming into his eyes. "A last fling at carnality, my dear. That's all. I must go back to the beginning, look at it again. Then we will speak some more."
"In this place, we will speak many times."
"Conceive your sons here. Bring your love here ..." He sighed and took both of my hands in his own. "I am not a wicked creature, Cal."
"I know that."
"Then let us do what must be done," he said. There was no way he could fight it, for the only way to fight it was to destroy me, which is what had to happen anyway.
As a column of shadow, I rose toward a vacillating brightness that in the moment of contact exploded into me as a countless number of sparks. At that moment, throughout the world, every Wraeththu har would shudder, raising his head to the sky, feeling fear, wonder, power. Those that slept would dream my dream, those that were awake would live it. Me, as a mote of the whole, in that instant became each of those individuals. And they felt me. And recognized me. But in Phaonica, the Cal that had been was consumed in the fire, spiraling helplessly, at one with the elemental force that held the world together. The walls of that temple trembled. I heard a piercing, agonised shriek that was Pellaz wrenched from the glass, pulled gasping through a crack of infinite sharpness, that cut and tore and ruined. I was high above the city and Immanion shuddered and groaned, black tongues licking its streets, sweeping oily smoke behind it.
Buildings listed, fell, twisted, screamed. Hara came out of their homes, still pulling on clothes, dragging harlings behind them, staring up in horror at a sky that was red and black; a kingdom of flame. I could see all this as I burned and it lasted an eternity. And yet it was just a moment. When the peace came, I was lying on a cold floor in the middle of a vast chamber that was completely empty. For a while I just experienced body. I hadn't been sure
I'd still have one. Now it was just harish, panting and winded, with aching guts and scraped lungs, dazed as a small child kicked over by a heavy foot. High above me in the arches of the temple, I could see a spark of light. That was all. I could not reach for it alone.
Phaonica was in darkness, its corridors and halls empty. Everyone was in hiding. I stumbled along the terraces for hours, seeking, seeking. There was no-one to show me the way and I was too confused and drained to use my mind to find him. I came to be standing in a garden and it was evening. I was looking up at a balcony and the open windows beyond it. Here must I climb. Creepers on the walls shook and shed their leaves as I clambered upwards, tendrils losing their grasp on stone. I nearly fell a dozen times, scraping my knees, my knuckles. As I climbed I heard a whimpering that came from above. It was the whimpering of an abandoned child. I swung my legs over the balcony and tried to wipe the dust and twigs from my clothes. Impossible. Easier to tear the rags from my body, even if it was ravaged and unclean beneath. But the filth fell away with the rags and, free of them, I was pale and pure of skin. Reborn. Maybe. For a moment, I stood at the window doors to the room beyond and I was just Cal again. A Cal who had a heart beating fast, whose breath caught in his throat because he faced the thing he desired and feared the most. I walked inside. The canopy was torn from the bed (shredded) and cast about the room. Tall, decorated jars filled with peacock feathers and palms had been thrown at the walls and lay smashed upon the floor. I saw a huddled shape lying amongst all this wreckage and recognized it as Vaysh, the guide of my vision. There was blood upon his forehead, a frown upon his face. Eyes closed. But he was not dead. A single glance told me that. I could feel his life, see it within him. Now I must look at the bed and it took courage to do that. Courage because it was Pellaz lying there, his body scratched and torn and bloodied, tortured in its posture, arms across his face. He was half-conscious, now mumbling, now silent, lying in a tangle of torn sheets and splinters of glass from the long windows that had burst inwards upon him. For a moment longer, I stood and looked at him. Was he different? Older, yes. He was no longer scrawny but lithe. I leaned forwards and uncrossed his arms; This was the moment then, when I looked into the face of the monster. I sat down on the bed, touched his cheek, his eyelids, his lips. The face of the Tigron. Beautiful and, in it, the ghost of my Pellaz. I was afraid to wake him, but knew I must. Standing at the foot of the bed once more, I raised my arms, reaching for the Light. (Here, Thiede, here. We shall reach you.) The bed was strewn with glass. I grabbed hold of the fringed coverlet and pulled sharply. Pellaz rolled onto the clean sheet beneath and groaned. He didn't open his eyes but reached up to touch his face. It's been so long since I touched him. So long. This seems like blasphemy. I lay down beside him.
My body was warm, his was cold. I fed him with heat so that he had to open his eyes and see that I was there. Such bewilderment. From me to the room to me. Confusion to start with. "What? What . . .!" Then he saw Vaysh lying on the wreckage-strewn floor
and screamed, "No!" thinking of Orien. He wanted to leap up, whether to escape or attack me, I couldn't be sure. I had to hold him down. He struggled, tried to bite me, but his struggles were weak because his powers had been disabled by Thiede's passage from flesh.
"Would I be here if it was simply death I was carrying?" I asked and he replied, "You have always carried destruction. It is you."
His nightmares, his dreams had been realized. How many times had he yearned to open his eyes and find me there? Even though he had known about Orien whom I murdered, and believed the tales that Thiede had told him, he had still hoped. Now it was true. "What has happened?" he asked. "What have you done?"
"Only what had to be done."
"Thiede has gone hasn't he," he said. "You have destroyed us all." He shuddered in my arms, looking around the room, seeing violation, just violation, too weak to protest any further.
I pulled him from the bed and dragged him over to the window, forced him onto the balcony. "Look at your city, Pell," I said and he turned his head away, eyes closed, wincing. "Look. Really look!" I forced his head around and made him see. On the highest levels, the stone still shone, and there were wide avenues where, in the morning, the light would dance. But now, there were also places where the light would never reach, the dark alleys, the subterranean canals and thoroughfares, where rats would creep and moaning ghosts disturb travelers from the lighter places above. Now, Immanion was whole, a place of softness and harshness, of thieves as well as angels, as all these things should be. Destroyed to be rebuilt. Not Thiede's city, but Wraeththu's. Not just Pell's, but mine too, as we were each other's. I led him back inside. He was still saying, "What have you done? What have you done?" and protested when I laid him on the bed. "You are the Destroyer, I'll have no part of you. Where is Thiede?"
"We shall find him," I said, "but you must trust me."
"Trust you?" he asked bleakly. "As I trusted you to come to me once Megalithica had fallen to our people? In the forest of Gebaddon you encountered the past. I made you ready to come to me, but you never did. Thiede never agreed with me about you, but he tried to h
elp. Even then you rejected me. I was just Pellaz who had died to you. A past occurrence, easily forgotten. It was never like that for me. I never forgot! Now you have returned, and it's like it always was; Cal and the sword of ruin. My city has gone. So too whatever power I once had, I expect." He sighed. "Life without you was never easy, but at least it was life. Now what have I got?"
"Everything," I answered. "More than you ever had before. Give me your hand." He pulled a sad, wry face, but did so. I opened up and burned him. He did not pull away.
"You are different." It was a wary decision. "How?"
"I must tell you everything," I said.
"Of course you must." He smiled. "So tell me."I had rehearsed this scene in my head countless times, anticipating his reactions, his outbursts, his silences. Now he just listened, nodding now and then, his face expressionless; the face of a king. For some reason I didn't tell him about the Kamagrian, feeling that should come later. He had enough to swallow without that. When I finished speaking, he lay facedown on the bed, his chin on his fists, his feet upon the pillow. I watched him digest what I'd told him. I thought about how you did not interrupt the thoughts of the Tigron; you waited until he spoke. I examined the curve of his spine, his black hair, tangled, that covered even his thighs. I looked at his straight nose, his dark eyes; everything. I could never get enough of that. It was like being starved to the point of death and then being presented with a freshly roast lamb accompanied by every exotic vegetable you can think of. One does not interrupt the thoughts of the Tigron, unless one is
Tigron too. "Well?" I said. I think I'd still been expecting him to leap on me with open arms.
He laughed. "This is crazy. My city explodes, Thiede evaporates and you burst in here naked telling me that now you're Tigron with me! Hell, I'm cut all over! Is this real? Am I going to wake up in a minute?" "Maybe, but not in the way you think."
He narrowed his eyes at me. "Cal, it's been over thirty years! This is just... oh, I don't know." He shook his head, pressed his brow against his arms on the bed. "I'm not the same person, Cal. You do realize that, don't you?" There was a hint, just a hint, of a certain wistfulness I'd recognize after a hundred years, never mind thirty.
"Neither am I, Pell, but we're not strangers are we?"
He smiled. "No. It doesn't feel like that. I don't know how it feels. Maybe we should see. The truth is I've waited a long time for this. Dreams, hopes; oh, I've had plenty of those! Now they are gone. If it's ruins beyond this, then it's ruins! I'll think about it another time." He turned over. "Pick the glass from my skin first, Cal. I may be immortal, but not impervious to pain. Here I am; yours. I always have been. Want to come home now?"
There were no shooting stars, no huge explosions. We didn't even know if we were truly in love as we'd once thought; only time would tell us that. We met as hara and conjoined as hara, but there was a difference. In the midst of our communion, when we were truly one, we could reach for the ultimate and it was there for us to touch. It was the true godhead, and when we joined with it we became Three. Divine. It will always be there for us and together we can touch it whenever we want to. The Aghama, a god of all attributes, the sum of our positive and negative, force and meekness, flesh and spirit, love and hate. I am the stone, Pell is the silk and Thiede has become the binding force that makes us mesh. This is what happened in Immanion in the year ai-cara 29. It should have happened twenty-nine years before.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Caeru, the Hegemony and Beyond
"If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved. "
— William Shakespeare, Sonnet XVIII
When we woke the next morning, we knew that it was real because the floor of the chamber was strewn with broken crockery, torn drapes, wind-hurled leaves. We knew that it was real because the smell coming in through the shattered windows was of smoke and destruction. Somewhere a bell was tolling, without urgency, desolately. For a while, we just held onto each other in the fragmented blankets, and we could weep without fear of weakness. A natural reaction; the numbness, the feeling of surreality, had gone. Pellaz asked me, "What have we become?" and for that first day, it was a wistful, melancholy sentiment, because the easy ways of the past were over. The real work had yet to begin.
We would rebuild Immanion, clear the debris; it was not as bad as it looked. Dreams had been shattered yes, but what would be rebuilt would consist of more than dreams. In that brief, eternal moment when I had become one with the lifeforce of Wraeththu, the truth had been revealed to me. As Immanion had changed, so too had other places, touched by the fire of the Triad. Now there was a small, scruffy town in Thaine known as Fallsend, whose grubby streets would open out into wider avenues where hara could walk free. I wondered what would be the fate of Piristil and its kind. Would there be
a place for them now? Was the force that strong? Somehow I doubted it. One thing I had learned was the utter need for light and dark, nothing can be wholly good, but if Piristil still thrived, then to complement it, there would be other houses; places of healing and learning. As Immanion could not be utterly Light, Fallsend could not be utterly Dark. From the mud would come roads, and other travelers would follow them, bringing the warmth of wholeness with them from the south and west. And what of Jaddayoth? I'd only experienced about half of it, but decided that most of the twelve tribes had, in their own way, already balanced their societies. Mainly they had just got on with the business of living. Gelaming, clearly, had just been trying too hard to live up to Wraeththu's potential, their beliefs had been too subjective.
Perhaps it was wrong (selfish, weak?) that I actually considered avoiding facing Panthera again, perhaps merely wise, but it was still late in the day when I forced myself to leave Pell's side to go and find him. We'd spent most of the morning trying to sort the Tigron's apartment out with Vaysh,who was nursing a colorful black eye. I had explained to Pell something about my companion from Jaddayoth. At first, he'd been rather unsympathetic with Panthera. "Why bother seeing him again? It's over, isn't it?"
"We parted messily. I don't like messes. Anyway, I owe him a lot. He deserves more than a kick out the door."
"Hardly that, Cal, but I suppose you're right. Don't be too long. There are things that need to be seen to."
It was not an easy mission. There was no guarantee that he'd still be at Ashmael's house although I was confident that he'd stick around to see how everything turned out. Most of Thandrello still stood intact, but a tree had crashed through a window of Ashmael's house, killing one of his staff. Ashmael and his people were in the grounds of the house clearing up, Ashmael stripped to the waist, hauling branches away from shattered glass. He was quite businesslike when he caught sight of me walking up the drive. He sauntered toward me, almost as if nothing had happened and casually asked after Pell. There was no mention of Thiede.
"I'll be up at Phaonica shortly," he said. "You and Pell must call an emergency meeting of the Hegemony; you do understand that, don't you?"
What with all the upheaval, I hadn't really thought about it. Pell certainly hadn't mentioned it, which was odd, because as Tigron, it should be the thing uppermost in his mind, whatever else was going on. "I suppose you're right," I answered.
Ashmael laughed grimly. "You're worried? Don't be! You're lucky in that the Hegemony will be in a bit of a flap; they won't give you their worst. After all, their godhead has . . ." He paused eloquently. "Pell will be able to tell you about how he fared at the Hegemony's hands when he first came here."
"Pell had Thiede to protect him as well." I shook my head. "Oh dear! Will they finish me off do you think?"
Ashmael was stony. "I doubt it. The very fact that Thiede is no longer... appears no longer to be around will act in your favor. They will look to Pell now for guidance; they will have to. They thought they were so democratic, but they're useless without Thiede's brains and common-sense."
"What makes you so sure they've lost those things?"
Ashmael
raised his brows. "Suspicions, hunches, how the hell will I know until you decide to tell me? Am I supposed to ask? Have you killed him?"
"You've been listening to too many stories about me, tiahaar!"
"Perhaps. Can't help it. They've all been so scandalous. So?"
"So, aren't we rather making light of a very heavy subject?"
Ashmael shrugged. "I've never been one for those kind of theatricals. If Thiede is dead, let's just get on with what we've got to do."
"Two days ago you spoke of loyalty."
"That was a millenium ago! Posthumous loyalty is a matter to be considered seriously. Maybe I will change my affinities in the light of what you know. Come on, tell me."
I sighed. "Oh, it's quite simple really. Thiede has become the Aghama."
Ashmael regarded me quizzically after this statement. "Become the Aghama, " he repeated slowly. "Does that mean he's dead or not?"
"It means that Thiede is no longer a har entirely of flesh and blood. It means he has become the god he's always styled himself to be. Let us just say that through sacrificing the flesh he has managed to attain the position he has always craved."