"Ah, time," he said, sighing. "When tomorrow comes, it often feels like there's never been a yesterday."
I took his hand. He could always tell what I was thinking. "Once it's past us, it's just like a story," I said, "like something we've only observed, or heard secondhand. How can I explain it?"
He shook his head. "You don't have to. Remember here is a har who once found the dead body of a friend who had been murdered in cold blood. Did that really happen? Now I am here and it's another story, another person's life. I can't believe it happened to me. All those threads weaving in and out, bringing me here to you . . ."
"Seel," I said, "you have never told me . . . about Cal, about you and him. I want to know."
He had been squatting beside me, now he sat down and turned my face toward him.
"I can remember the first time I met him," he said. I didn't speak. Seel looked away from me, at the water. "We were only children then. He was always . . . strange. Popular, but the other kids were afraid of him. He fascinated me, he bewitched me... .
We became har in our early teens, but had been lovers for some time before that. He went to the Uigenna, whileI was incepted into the Unneah. I thought I'd never see him again, but ho didn't stay with the Uigenna for long. When he came to the Unneah, 1 foolishly thought he'd come because of me, but then he had Zack with him. 'You're too good, Seel,' he used to say to me, as if that was something despicable. Zack wasn't good. He was mad and bad and beautiful. After I left the north and went to start the Saltrock community, they'd come visit me sometimes. I once took aruna with them and it was terrifying. They loved to hurt each other. But they did love, I am sure of that." It surprised me to hear Seel say that, knowing how the Gelaming looked on such emotions. "I don't often think of those times now," he said and stood up, walking to the water's edge. "Things happen, Swift, times change. We are conceited enough to think we can understand the future, even see part of it, but ..."
We looked at each other and an amazing flash of insight passed between us. Understanding of something infinite. Within seconds, it had passed. I held out my hand. Together, we walked back to the house.
We prepared for our final journey north. Arahal took me to his room and showed me the crystal, lying in a silk wrap of deepest indigo, pulsing with restless life, throbbing colors almost too painful to look at directly. "It worked well," Arahal said and smiled at me. "Such power!"
"I can assure you the product was merely incidental," I said.
Arahal laughed. "It worked better than Thiede could ever have imagined."
"I doubt that."
"And soon your child will come into the world." "Yes." I decided to confess an anxiety that had been bothering me for some time. "Arahal, Thiede wanted us to make this child for a specific purpose. What is it? Will he want to take the child from us?"
Arahal clasped my shoulder. "Don't be ridiculous! He won't take the harling away from you."
"No, perhaps not the harling . . . but the har?" Arahal shook his head. "A childhood; seven years. Later you must ask these questions again. I don't know the reason behind all this. That's Thiede's business. We have more immediate problems." "I want Seel to stay here when we leave." "Impossible; he will never agree."
"But the child!"
"It will survive whatever happens."
My hostling had already been approached about fostering the harling while Seel and I were away. It was a role he enjoyed, I suppose, and one to which he was entirely suited. I did not argue.
I could knead Seel's stomach and feel the hard growth that was the pearl within him. He complained of pain occasionally and was becoming more and more restless, but I could soothe him by stroking his back or combing out his hair. If he relaxed the pain usually went away.
Ashmael asked for the stableyard to be cleared and disinfected, the walls repainted. This was done without question. He had a pentacle painted upon the ground and wrote strange words all around it. Nightly, we gathered in that place and Ashmael, acting as shaman, began the preliminary entreaties toward the seventy amulet angels invoked at the time of childbirth. Cobweb would never join us, but I often saw him watching us from an upstairs window. Seel was anointed and blessed; he shone with a radiance that made me want to break the circle and take him in my arms. Later, alone with him in my father's bed, I would tell him he was perfect, again and again, until he'd tell me to shut up. "If I was perfect, I wouldn't feel the way I do," he said.
"How do you feel? How?" I asked urgently, pulling him against me, feeling his hard stomach hot against mine.
"That I want to be with you like this," he replied. "That I want you selfishly. I am worried my feelings will infect the pearl."
"But they must!" I told him.
"Thiede chose me for my level head, among other things, remember."
"Then it will be our son's secret defense against Thiede," I suggested triumphantly.
"That is not the idea," Seel replied with cynicism.
I am glad that it happened at night; daylight would have been too harsh. Ashmael wanted Seel to deliver the pearl in the yard, within the pentacle, but we both protested violently against that. "I am not an animal!"
Seel exclaimed. "I will not give birth in a stableyard. I will not be watched scrabbling inelegantly around!"
"Since when have you developed such an exaggerated sense of vanity?" Ashmael snapped.
"Oh, and who is without vanity?" Seel argued relentlessly. "Coming from someone who is so well acquainted with his mirror, Ashmael, I'm surprised you have the nerve to say that."
"You were never this bothersome before, Seel."
"I was never in this outlandish state before!"
Ashmael gave in reluctantly, but insisted that my father's room be prepared properly. Half the furniture was removed. Cobweb was far from pleased and watched the undertaking with a disapproving, beady eye.
I had tried to spend some time with my hostling each day, but he was still reserved with me. I imagined that Cal had spoken to him about Seel when they had been together and Cobweb made a great display of his loyalty to Cal and my father. I was shown up as a merciless traitor to my tribe, but because Cobweb is not especially hard-hearted, he softened toward me eventually, especially when Seel argued with Ashmael over where to deliver the pearl.
"I cannot see how it will be beneficial for hostling or harling if Seel has to suffer being made a public spectacle," Cobweb said to Ashmael.
"Your opinion is respected, Tiahaar," Ashmael replied. "But I don't think you quite grasp the semantics."
"Perhaps not, but I grasp entirely the reality of what it would be like to deliver a pearl onto rough stone in front of a cluster of gawping idiots," Cobweb replied, smiling.
One evening, Seel left the dining room, halfway through the meal, without explanation. I followed him out, and found him half hanging over the bannisters, trying to get upstairs.
"Do you have to tell them?" he begged me.
I carried him to our room and laid him on the bed. He immediately curled up into a tight ball.
"I must bathe your face," I said.
"What the hell for?" He uncurled, stretched, yelped and curled up again.
"You're sweating."
"Never mind that! Tie my hair back." I couldn't find anything suitable to do it with.
"I must fetch someone!" I cried. "I don't know what to do! What if something goes wrong?"
"No!"
I remembered Cal once being in the same state and also that I had not been in the room when he had expelled the pearl. I hesitated for a moment longer, watching Seel moaning softly to himself, and then ran for the door. "Swift!" Seel called after me, but I didn't stop.
Ashmael took control. He strode into that room and ordered, "Seel, sit up!" Seel put his hands over his ears and Ashmael pointed at me. Cobweb was with me. Together, we lifted Seel up onto the pillows. By this time, Seel was almost delirious and did not object when we undressed him. Arahal paced restlessly at the end of the bed. Bryony brought us
hot water and a cloth. I asked for a ribbon and tied up Seel's hair. He opened his eyes and looked at me.
"God, I don't like this. I don't like this!" he said. "Hold me, Swift. Please."
"Don't get in the way now, Swift," Ashmael said.
Outside a wind had come up, howling round the weathered walls of Forever with an eerie shrill sound. Seel ground his teeth and whimpered into my shoulder. Arahal had set up a tripod supporting a shallow metal dish. Into this Ashmael threw dark, pungent dust to which Arahal applied a flame. With a gusting glow, the powder began to exude silvery smoke, whose thick perfume was so strong, Bryony, standing nearest to it, began to cough.
Ashmael began the entreaties: "Yezriel, Azriel, Lahal..." Cobweb and I held onto Seel's arms, while his body writhed in discomfort. "Chaniel, Malchiel, Ygal. . ."
As if his body understood that this was primarily a female function, all the masculine parts of Seel's body tactfully withdrew, as during aruna when a har is soume. He bit my arm. "I am being destroyed from within," he said.
"You must visualize it through," Arahal instructed above Ashmael's invocation.
This is being conducted on two levels, I thought. On one level we have Ashmael and the Spirit, on the other we have the rest of us and the body.
"Tell Ashmael his voice hurts my ears," Seel said to me.
It did not take that long, maybe fifteen minutes, but it seemed like an eternity. The room was full of incense, all silvery smoke, and Cobweb lifted the pearl from the damp bed and held it up. Seel was a dead weight in my arms. I offered him a cup of water and he said, "One day, I'm going to make you go through this," and we both smiled for the wonderful fact that it was entirely possible.
Seven days later, the shell of the pearl cracked and our son was real and breathing, mewling angrily at the world. I was disappointed that I missed it; someone was sent to fetch me from Galhea. Soon we would be going north and there were still many preparations to be made.
I ran into the house and up the stairs. Bryony and Cobweb were sitting on the bed on either side of Seel, and Tyson was prowling around the room, trying not to look interested. Seel smiled when he saw me. "Look, Swift, look!" he exclaimed. Cobweb stood up to let me sit on the bed. I stared in joyous disbelief at what Seel held in his arms.
"Weird!" I said, which was all I could think of at the time.
The harling turned its head shakily at the sound of my voice. Its eyes were enormous; Cobweb eyes. Dark hair curled down its neck; its skin was flawless. Cobweb stooped and put his arm around my shoulder. "You were once just like this," he said.
"Take him." Seel held the harling out to me. It was so warm. Its hands clawed the air and it whimpered once out of Seel's arms.
"He can't see that well yet," Cobweb said.
Bryony's eyes were full of tears; she always seemed to weep when she was happy. Seel noticed and held her hand. He understood she was thinking about whether she would ever have a child of her own. There were no men in her life; she never mixed with the humans in Galhea, and even if she had a mate, there was no certainty that she was fertile. Many women weren't. I put my son into her arms and he seemed more comfortable there.
"You grew up so quickly, Swift," she said.
"It didn't seem that way to me."
Tyson strolled over to us. "I remember when you were born and when you hatched," I said to him.
His grave little face did not flicker. "I remember you, Swift. I gave you ribbons and stones once." It was the first time he had made any reference to having known me before. I put my hand on his shoulder and he did not move away.
"I am glad that your son was born here at Forever," Cobweb said to me that evening. "I am glad you came home."
I decided not to tell him that it hadn't been my decision exactly. "Tell me what you think of Seel now," I said.
Cobweb lowered his eyes. "He is exactly how Cal described him to me. I know I can't blame him for what has happened ..."
"Have you answered me?"
"I don't know. Have I?" he replied.
Some moments later, Arahal came into the room. "Ashmael and I would like to speak with you now," he said to Cobweb.
I knew immediately that it concerned my father. I stood up, deeply aware of an urge to
flee.
"Sit down, Swift," Arahal said sternly. "We would like you to stay. We would like you
to hear this."
The Varrs had ridden south, into the mist, beyond Astigi. They had ridden into the
forest, separating, getting lost, their minds wandering, panicking and helpless. Their
weapons rusted away in hours. Their horses fell beneath them, mouldering away to bones
in seconds. The sounds of their anguished screams had echoed around the treetops like
the harsh calls of carrion birds.
In the center of the forest, in a clearing, stands a lichened, white shrine dedicated to the Aghama. It is doubtful that anyone ever prays there, but it was in this place that Thiede and Pellaz waited for my father. It took him days to find them. I wondered what he had thought about, wandering into that sacred glade and seeing them sitting there. Did he have the taste of blood in his mouth. Had he remembered Gahrazel? Ashmael told me that Thiede and Pellaz had played dice to pass the time while they were waiting. Maybe they had diced for the souls of my people, like Death and Justice,
looking up when Terzian staggered out of the trees, letting the dice fall one last time. Their ultimatum had been simple: change your ways, Terzian, confess your crimes, beg forgiveness, or go to your doom. His response had been inevitable: go to Hell! It was unfortunate for him that he did not understand what form his doom would take. Had he expected a sword thrust to the heart, a cup of Uigenna poison, a bullet to the brain? But it was not death; not that. Not any of those fitting punishments.
They had taken him to Immanion, capital of Almagabra, lush, green Gelaming country. In some place there, which Ashmael did not describe to us, the Gelaming stripped my father's soul and regressed him to the blackest, reddest times and made him face himself; his weaknesses, his faults, his sins. Oh, they'd known who would have been the best Varr to make Gelaming and turn against Ponclast. It had not been me. Not at first. It showed me that Terzian had not been beyond redemption; they wouldn't have bothered with him if he was. But he would not break, he would not turn around. Instead, he raved, he wept, he flailed his arms helplessly against the truth, but he would not recant. I had to sit in the calm, golden
drawing room of my father's house while Ashmael told us that Terzian had eventually begged Thiede's people to kill him. It had come to that. He would never try to kill himself and they knew that. They would not end it for him.
"Seek forgiveness from the souls you have wronged!" they ordered, but he still refused. Then they spoke about Gahrazel. Insidious voices. "Didn't you once have fond feelings for Ponclast's son? Do you remember the first journey south that you made and what you said to him then? Didn't you promise him protection? You knew he was different, didn't you, Terzian? You knew he held, deep within him, the urge to run. You could have protected him, couldn't you? You had the chance. But instead you chose to enjoy his death. Did you enjoy it, Terzian?"
Terzian had shaken his head at them. "No. I did not kill him. It was Ponclast. Ponclast did it!"
"You deceive yourself!"
"I never lie!"
"You took part in his murder."
"I had to!" His cry had been despairing. He thought he would never speak these words, for it showed his weakness, and it was a weakness of the heart. "My son was implicated," he told them. "They were close friends. Ponclast believed that Swift was involved in Gahrazel's defection. The only way I could protect my son was to comply with Ponclast's wishes. I always had to comply with Ponclast's wishes. There was too much he could do to damage me. I love my family!"
Did it bring me relief to hear that? It was an excuse, wasn't it? An excuse for all that bloodshed and bestiality. He had done it for love; for me and Cobwe
b. It sickened me. If Terzian had really felt all that, why, in God's name, hadn't he turned on Ponclast when he got the chance? I couldn't understand it then and I never will. Ashmael continued with the story of my father's imprisonment and my hostling and I sat apart on the sofa, listening with frozen faces.