"Is it? Will it hurt?"
"Who knows!"
I looked at my father. He is lithe, I thought, and tonight he looks so young. His heavy, golden hair was falling into his eyes. He raised his hand to push it back and glanced quickly across the room. I felt that look pass straight through my body like an arrow. I did not have to turn my eyes to Cal. I felt it. My father was like a stranger, no longer familiar to me. My head began to swim and I realized I'd knocked back two glasses of sheh without noticing. Is this what it's like? I wondered. This power, this hidden fire? Is it waiting for me some day? I looked slyly at Leef. Will it really be you . . . ?
"I've drunk too much," I said and Leef glanced at me sharply. He was so uncomfortable; I felt sorry for him.
"Swift . . ." he said and I could not see all of his face, only his mouth talking or his gray eyes, but not together.
"What?"
"I want to . . ." He put his fingers lightly on my mouth and shook his head. "Terzian's son!" he said and smiled.
Now it was me that felt uncomfortable. "I want to watch my father," I said. Leef followed me over to the sofa and we sat on the floor.
"Do you often watch your father?" he asked, wondering what kind of joke I was playing on him.
"Never!" I replied. "Leef, have you ever wanted Cobweb?"
"Stop it!" Leef hissed in a low voice.
"Another thing that is Terzian's. . . . He is smoke and ivy."
"And you are three-quarters sheh at the moment!"
"This is how we live; we are all quite mad. Don't be annoyed with me."
Leef shook his head and drew his mouth into a thin line.
I could see Cobweb talking to Ithiel, and his face was white and wild, his hair unbound, which always signified that he wanted to feel his own power around him. Ithiel looked as if he knew that he might have physically to restrain Cobweb before too long. Has anyone else noticed? I wondered. Desire in the air, so strong, it smelled like burning. I could feel it in my lungs, my head, behind my eyes. How can they stand it? I thought. Their need for each other is another being in the room, almost visible.
Eventually Terzian could stand it no longer. I saw him put the empty glass down slowly on the mantelpiece, rub his face, glance once more at Cal. He excused himself politely to the Kakkahaar, and began to make his way across the room, stopping to exchange brief conversation with other hara, smiling, gracious, signalling the staff to bring more drinks. As he passed me, he looked down and grinned and I grinned back; but we were strangers. I had no part in this event.
Cal was standing quite near to where Leef and I were sitting. I heard my father say to him, without deferment, "I have been waiting for you," and Cal's reply, "Yes, I know."
There was a pause, then Terzian said, "I know what happened while I was away."
"Of course you do, Terzian. You know everything," Cal replied, rather coldly. "What surprises me is that you haven't mentioned it before."
"Hmm."
They were so awkward with each other I began to think Gahrazel had been wrong. Leef said, "What's the matter?" but I waved him to silence. My father said, "You're still afraid, aren't you?" 1 could imagine Cal shrugging but I dared not look around. "Afraid? Not exactly. Alarmed, perhaps. I expect your terms haven't changed."
"Terms?" Terzian's voice was raised, then he remembered he was in a room full of people, some of whom had turned their heads. "I am not so callous," he said quietly.
"You are! You know you are."
"You know how much I wanted you before. It wasn't just to sire harlings with you, perfect though they'd be . . ."
"But it's part of it, Terzian. Why can't you admit that?"
"Admit it?" My father's voice was almost sad. "You're a fine one to talk about admissions. Maybe you should admit to yourself that you're made to host sons, to sire them. You are Wraeththu. Admit that, Cal!"
Can no-one hear them? I wondered. Leef was staring at the carpet while my blood was in flames. Cobweb was a thin ghost, distant and in chains. My father said, "I would never hurt you, Cal."
"I know that."
"It's in your blood; you need me. It's been too long."
"I know that.... There is one thing you must do." I heard the steel come into his voice, but I knew, if I looked, his face would be innocent. Sensing triumph, my father said, "Yes, anything, anything." There was a brief silence and I knew that Cal was looking around the room, making sure the right people were watching.
"If you want me, you must prove it. Nothing sordid. I think I deserve the status and demand recognition of my position."
"Cal, what are you talking about?"
"Don't laugh, Terzian. I know what your people think. Cobweb is like your queen. He's respected. I don't want anything less."
Perhaps it was only me that knew Cal cared nothing about things like that. This was just another move in the game and, of course, Terzian would fall for it, because it was the language he understood. Cal said, "Terzian, I want you to take me in your arms."
"Here?"
"Now! Share breath with me, here. Let them all see. I must be equal to Cobweb, nothing less."
"Is that all?"
All! I thought. Their embrace will take the form of a blade, more than one; ten. Who will lie face down on the bloody soil, pierced by swords, now? Terzian's consort, to be shamed before the elite of Galhea, that's who.
I sensed the silence fall around me and realized I had closed my eyes. I heard Leef mutter, "Good God, look at that!" His surprise was tempered by amusement.
The first thing I saw was Ithiel, trying to hold a feral Cobweb in his arms. Cobweb, with eyes like black saucers full of obsidian fire. He made no sound, struggling silently. I could not turn to look. I stood up, Leef tried to pull me back, he made some palliative sound, but I did not listen. I went straight to the door, across the carpet, past the faces who did not see me, a hundred miles away.
In my room, alone, sitting in darkness, I licked tears from my face, listening to the noises downstairs. There was still laughter, the buzz of voices, perhaps more so than before. The tension had disappeared. I voided my mind, letting it become a great and silent blackness, and into that emptiness I formed my hostling's name. Before too long, I heard the door open behind me and light from the corridor shone into the room. "I had to walk past your father's door," Cobweb said.
"Already?" I asked and my hostling nodded silently. I must have been sitting alone for longer than I thought.
"You did this!" I pointed out cruelly.
Cobweb shut the door. He leaned upon the door and slid down it. I wanted to go to him, but I had no energy. I couldn't tell how I felt about anything any more. Cobweb was crouched against the wall, his hair touching the floor, beaten in so many ways.
"What is happening?" I asked the room.
"If it should happen tonight, then we shall feel it. We shall feel the soul when it comes . . ." Cobweb's voice was a whisper in my head.
I uncurled my feet from under me, touched the window with one hand. It was cold, much colder than the room.
Cobweb didn't resist when I went to help him up. He felt light, as if all his substance had drained away. I could smell moss in his hair. I led him over to my bed and he lay down on it. Standing there, I looked at the spidery, dark locks creeping over my pillows, his face that is a wood-creature's face, and I thought, So many times Terzian has stood as I am standing now and seen that lying there. Then I thought, My father is so greedy! and then, No, he is just very fortunate!
"Has the spring come already, Swift?" Cobweb asked. "Is it all over?"
"Not for you," I answered.
Cobweb laughed, an ugly, bitter sound. "It is the real magic that comes from within," he said. "We are all under its spell. It destroys us, yet we need it. ... We should have destroyed it first. We are all tangled up, here in Galhea. We're not reaching out."
I understood some of what he was trying to say.
"It is said we are getting caught in the same traps that men once set for themselves," I
said, and Cobweb sighed.
"We are all spiders; without the webs we cannot feed."
"You tried to kill him, didn't you?"
Cobweb turned his head slowly on the pillow, dark and lovely as a velvet poisonous flower. "I think my child attempts excuses for what has happened. Cal does not want Terzian. He seeks only to attack me. I need your support, Swift. Where is it?"
1 fell to my knees beside the bed and took his long, cool hands in my own. "Cobweb, it is not a question of support! You tried to kill him! You're intelligent enough to realize that this is only the most predictable of reactions. You caused it yourself. You should have let well alone."
Cobweb threw his arms over his eyes. "I hate him! He makes me let darkness into my soul! I want him dead!" He sat up, wild-eyed, reaching with clawed hands for my shoulders. "Can't you see what he does to me? Worse than leaving me lonely, he extinguishes the light in me. It is a battle that sometimes I am too tired to fight and I let it come, and I let it take me over and then I hate him and wish him dead and find my hands around the things that could make him dead. He damns me!"
"No, it is you!" I cried. "You damn yourself! It is in your head!"
Cobweb pushed me away as if I repulsed him. "I'm going to Swithe," he said.
"No!" I would not let him stand. "Stay with me!"
"Why? Why should I? When I look at you, I see your father in your eyes; the same madness. You're as obsessed with that dark beast as your father is!"
1 could say nothing. Immediately, "he is right" formed in my head. I lowered my eyes and a pane of ice was between us.
"I knew it!" Cobweb growled, very quietly.
And then emotion was bursting up, like a spire of blood, through my heart. I threw myself against him, curling my arms around him, very tight.
"I love you!" I cried. His body was cold and unyielding. "I do! I do! I swear it! I will never betray you!"
1 felt his hands on my back, flexing from paws to hands to paws. I felt his leafy sigh
through my hair.
"Mine," my hostling whispered. "Mine . . . Mine!"
Another dream:
A voice says to me, "It is nothing. Outside is the real Hell. This is nothing."
I must have been crying. My head is on my knees. When I look up, there arc two eyes in front of me. I cannot see the face, I say, "Oh, I will never go outside!" and even in the dream, I know that this isn't true. I put up my hands. I shout, "I don't know you! I don't know you!" but I want to look into those eyes forever.
That is the way of dreams; they are never logical.
CHAPTER SIX
Straw in the Wind
Straw in the wind Blowing in my dreams. A birth in the Spring Sinking into pillows.
So for some of us, Festival was to be devoid of merriment that year. Admittedly, the house was full of hara blissfully ignorant of the dreadful stirrings in Forever's heart, and food and drink were in plentiful supply, everyone was smiling, but there was still Cobweb's gaunt and haunted silence to face every day. Terzian chose to ignore it. For various reasons, mostly, I like to think, because of loyalty to my hostling, I decided to stop speaking to Cal. Predictably, this only made him laugh. "Close ranks, Swift," he said. "The wicked seducer is loosed among you!" He knew, as we all did, that it had been Cobweb who had freed him from his fear of aruna.
At dinner, in the evening, I found that I was sitting next to Leef. He made several brave attempts at conversation and then commented drily on my sullen silence. I didn't want him to think I no longer liked him, but I was powerless to speak. I wanted to look at him helplessly, so that he might ask me what the matter was, but I could only stare at my plate. I couldn't understand myself, why I was locked in such a strange depression, and I wished desperately someone would notice it and say the right words that would release me, but Leef only sighed and turned to speak to someone sitting on his other side.
The new year had started with everyone in a sour temper, and that was a bad omen. The atmosphere did not improve when my father announced that he expected Gahrazel to accompany him to the south when the spring weather allowed it. I knew how Gahrazel felt about the approaching campaign. It wasn't that he was torn between loyalty to his tribe and loyalty to his beliefs; he just craved peace, an easy life, more than anything. He was angered by cruelty and killing appalled him. He knew Terzian was seeking to change all that about him. My father also sent Peter to work for Ithiel and we all knew that Ithiel and his staff would be remaining in Galhea when the Varrs set off to confront the Gelaming.
I had come to hate movement and rarely left the house. My sleep was often disturbed at that time by troubling dreams, whose main feature seemed to be the enigmatic eyes I had seen before. In a short time, I would celebrate my birthday. In a short time, I could expect to come of age. It was a prospect I anticipated with dread. Since Festival, I spent more and more time alone. My love was knowledge, not flesh. Swithe gave me books to read, and I virtually devoured their pages with my eyes, so eager was I to scour them for information, for answers. I learned a great deal about the world
and about the past, but little about my own condition. Wraeththu had not been in existence long enough for anyone to have had the time to write serious books about our singular, wondrous estate. When I grew older, perhaps I could be one of the first to begin the analysis. That was when I started to keep notes, to write down my impressions of what was happening to us. The foundations of my life had become unsteady, the sacrosanct haven of my home soiled. Cobweb had become an icy and tragic figure, haunting the upper parts of the house or scrawling horrific, black pictures with splintered charcoal in his room. The faces he drew came into my dreams, the aftertaste of their anguish flavored my days. Even Gahrazel had become a bitter, fevered thing. The intrigues of Forever no longer seemed to interest him and he had learned how to kill. He gave Peter a Wraeththu name, Purah. They were together always, for their days together were numbered.
All I can say of Cal is that I could only look at him with painful anger. He would look back with smiling, knowing eyes. I heard him whistling in the corridor outside my room on those nights when he would go to my father. His presence burned me, and I tried to avoid him. It was clear he felt no remorse for the pain he had brought into the house, nor that he had lost me as a friend. I could not believe that he returned my father's feeling as strongly. It was all a game to him, to pass the time, to eliminate boredom. Time and again, I told myself to hate him.
As a fitting punishment for our ignorant behavior, Cobweb and I were the last to hear of the momentous news when it came. It happened only a few weeks after Festival and it was Bryony who told us. Cal was to host a son for Terzian; Phlaar had confirmed it. Just hearing about it made me see them together, in my father's bed, in that room. I was glad in a way, because I knew Cal would hate it. He was not made to be a hostling, no matter what my father thought.
Cobweb did not scream or rage as I expected. He took the news quite calmly, and I did not ask bewildered questions. We were quite, quite dignified, like something out of the history books. I remembered Cal once likening Cobweb to a queen and that was how I saw us now. The imprisoned queen and her son hearing news of the king's new wife; out of favor, out of mind. Cobweb and I drew closer together. I was wrapped in his ophidian hair, his inky eyes, and we caressed each other's black hearts with pungent fires and dark, whispered words. We nurtured our powers and found satisfaction in occult promises. "We too shall host a pearl," my hostling said, "the blackest pearl of regret!" It was a promise that was never realized.
When the first shoots found their way up into the light and the garden stirred and stretched into the spring, we watched them leave. Black, shining horses and the finest of Varrish hara. Terzian leaned down from his horse and embraced Cal for the last time, looking up to glance at Cobweb's expressionless face as he stood on the steps of Forever. My father called to me and offered his hand, which I took. "I shall bring you home a beautiful Gelaming slave," he said with a smile.
&n
bsp; I grinned back weakly. "Good luck," I said.
Terzian raised his hand and they turned their horses toward the gate. Cal stood near to me but I did not look at him. Terzian turned in the saddle once and waved to us, before quickening the pace to a canter. It was an impressive sight. The main body of his army would be waiting for him in the town.
Afterwards, I paused on the steps of Forever and gazed up at its worn, white walls. It seems my story has ended already, I thought wistfully. All the happiness has gone from this house. Now it is forbidding and its secrets are cruel. Now, as long ago, a woman, a daughter of man, holds the keys to its rooms. Perhaps there was only Bryony left really to care about the place. To Cobweb, Forever had taken on the ghost semblance of a ruin of stark, poking rafters; a charred remnant of a home. His touch had palpably withdrawn from the rooms. Now he claimed only the darkest corners of the garden and his own suite on the second floor.