The woman was crouched in a doorway. I saw her first, but could not stop, my legs still frozen to Red's damp sides. I could not take cover. How her eyes hated me; black, almost blind with hate. She held the gun, really too large for her to use, against her belly, rag covered, twisted with poverty and tongueless rage. She saw me, wretched, weak as she was. Wraeththu, shining Wraeththu. Sleek with health, she saw the blood of her kind light my flesh from within. She struggled with the gun, raised it ...
The shock came before the sound, the single, rolling, echoing sound. Something cracked against my head. At the front. At the back. There was no pain, no further sound. My body started to fall, but the essence of me still stared out between Red's ears in surprise. Vaguely, like a phantom, Cal flashed past me, red over white, like a scarf on the wind, and the woman died in silence. No resistance. Nothing. Just a weary confusion in her eyes as she looked at the knife. As it rose. As it fell. Slowly. I could see all around, colors bright enough to ache, the sky a white, white light. I saw Cal, his cheek cut by flying bone, stand over the shell that had been Pellaz. Red and white. He could not take it in. Then he kneeled. Warm lips against the cooling flesh. I could not feel it. In his confusion he could not feel me. I did not want to leave him; I could smell his tears. He gently pressed his fingers against the red star above and between my eyes. The ground, Cal's knees, were dark red. So much blood in one small body. One body containing all that red. The horses were shaking, foam along their sides. Cal threw back his head and screamed, howled; an animal cry. All feeling was leaving him; I could sense his numbness, his rage; all of this. For a while, I ignored the insistance, the calling. I wanted to watch Cal. I still needed him. We belonged to each other. If I left, I was afraid he might forget me. Already the scene had become unreal, like watching a moving picture, dusty with age.
The Call. Above the houses, the light had condensed into a star. Not really me, half me, I went up to meet it, I could not resist, and the eyes in the light were familiar, knowing. That was when I wanted to scream, but it was too late. I had no throat.
It was . . . rushing. Rushing past me, over me, through me. Moving black air, threads of light; spiraling curls of ether. I felt my murderer wailing at my heels. The soul, no longer she, a nebulous, tumbling light; afraid and screaming the voiceless fear of the newly dead. Our journey; a squealing, aching descent, ascent, through black gulfs and summitless cliffs. We were the only light between obsidian crags that were frozen forever beneath a black sky. No time; the limitless yawning of aeons. And then faster; something zooming in. Gold and shining. I wanted to throw up my arms before my face, but I had neither; nothing to shield me from the brightness. Reality shift. Upsidedown, inside-out. Impossible shapes scored my substance; sickening impossible, zigzag agonies. I was drawn, sucked, inside the golden columns. Inside a temple of light, its glory turned toward the starless dark of infinity. The soul, my companion, denied access, fled shrieking upwards and away. That was all. I can remember only that I remembered. It is no longer real. Like I only heard it somewhere, read it in a book. Do you understand? It was a split-second, a micro-unit, of time that my memory has retained. I can get it to replay, sometimes, on the blank screen between my eyes. I just have done. Do you understand?
It was sound that first came back to me; a voice. I could not understand the words, yet at the same time knew their meaning. It said, "He is perfect," and another voice answered, "Yes, he is." After sound, I became aware of solidity, my soul again encumbered by flesh. I accepted this without question. Then the flesh gave vent to its pain and poured its torment into my brain; stretching, searing, burning. Tears formed in my hot eyes, my hot, blind eyes. I could sense movement, life, around me, but could not see it.
Everything was blank; not dark, just blank. Color was a concept I could no longer grasp. Voices came at me again, fluctuating in volume and pitch. "Pellaz! Pellaz!"
No! I tried to move the awkward flesh.
"Pellaz, you are with me. Don't fight it!"
Drenched with recollection, I knew, I knew that voice. I wanted to scream and die.
"Open your eyes!"
I can't, can't.
"Open your eyes!"
No, no, no, no.
Something hard like glass was pushed between my teeth. Sour liquid scalded my sealed throat, but I had to swallow. Coughing, spluttering; liquid in my lungs. Rough, wet cloth scored across my closed eyelids, dabbing, then pulling.
"Open them, Pellaz; you can."
Fingers prised at my skin; it felt like tearing, the edges of my lids were sealed and gummy. Lashes tore loose and tears poured down my face. Light pushed into me like hot pokers and I cried out. I heard myself cry out. The agony was insufferable. A hot thread pricked the inside of my arm, followed by a cool wave creeping up toward my neck. When it reached my head, I stopped screaming
"There. Pellaz?"
My mouth felt thick and numb. I could barely move my lips, and my voice, when it came, was like a breeze through tissue, but I said, "Thiede ..." I could see him. Tall, shining, flames for hair; his eyes were black with curiosity. He wore a white robe that showed his chest hung with pentacled chains; behind him the room was white. I could see his hand, resting against his cheek, long pointed fingernails tapping thoughtfully.
"Thiede, why?" I croaked. He did not answer, but covered me with a line sheet up to the neck. I could not feel it.
"Rest now," he said, smiling gently his dragon's smile. "You must rest."
"How can I?" I hurt so much; the deepest hurt in my heart. I knew nothing, was incapable of knowing anything; too tired to care, yet my mind churned backwards from a fear of sleep.
"Take this," he said and his hand arched over me, the nails glistening with the luster of pearl. "A temporary oblivion."
Dust was falling, falling, falling; the dust of centuries. I would fall back into a lighter slumber where dreams would walk once more. Up from the eternal pitch, the senseless peace. I slept.
For days, perhaps weeks, Thiede kept me in a semi-stupor, bringing me back to reality only at mealtimes. Even then, my limbs were too feeble to guide the food to my mouth; others fed me. Half-seen attendants saw to my bodily needs; cleaned me, turned me to prevent sores. My mind was switched off. I thought of nothing; watching only colors behind my closed eyes. My dreams were just of colors. Even so, I was fairly comfortable; just a little stiff. Hara came to massage my limbs three times a day. I could smell the light fragrance of the hot oil they kneaded into my skin. Sometimes, propped up on the pillows, I would stare at the room. It was sparsely furnished, but functional and tasteful. There were no mirrors and the windows were shrouded by gauze; I could not see what lay outside. Concealed lamps comforted me in the dark hours, so that I was never left alone in blackness. Sometimes, I thought I could hear music, wistful music or the tinkling of wind-chimes. It was so quiet there, no voices in the other rooms; the only sound, the only regular sound, was of footsteps outside my door, quick and light. The food they gave me was necessarily easily digested yet tinged with perfume I had never smelled before. Its fragrance would linger in my throat and nose long after the food had gone. After some time, I became alert enough to see properly the hara that fed me. Every evening, during my massage, a stern-faced, red-haired Har came to look at me. I guessed he was inspecting my progress. Thiede never came; not then. Reduced to the status of a child, I trusted completely my silent attendants. Not once, that I can remember, did I think of Cal.
One evening, the red-haired Har came alone to my room. He brought with him a tray of food, which I obediently began to eat. I was surprised when he spoke. "Pellaz, do you feel stronger now?" I must have looked startled, jolted out of my mindlessness. I had not thought about myself or my condition since waking up here. He did not press for an answer.
"I am Vaysh," he said.
"Vaysh," I repeated, stupidly.
I think it genuinely hurts him to smile, he so rarely does, but he did try for me that night.
"You must bathe," he
told me. Silent-footed hara drifted into my sight and, at his signal, raised me from the bed. Dizziness blinded me again. All I could see was flashing light as they eased my arms into soft cloth. "Slowly!" Vaysh instructed. Slung between them, they carried me off.
When my vision cleared, they were lowering me into a bath set into the floor, steaming with greenish aromas. I know this ritual, I thought. It was all so familiar; only the room was different. Flickering recall of Mur and Garis . . . Saltrock . . . inception . . . Cal. . . . Then the knife twisted in my heart. The veil in my head turned to glass, thin as ice, and shattered. I made noises, horrible, unintelligible noises and all the time, the ghostly, silent hara just kept on smiling their soothing smiles, caressing my skin, their lingers lathering my hair. Weeping, in a hopeless, monotonous way, I lay in the bath, salt in my mouth, behind my eyes, saying his name endlessly in the tortured dark of my mind.
They put me back into the bed, oh so gently, their soft sighs filming my pain. So beautiful they were, so beautiful, but surreal and heartless. They laid me naked on the bed, on my back and drew back the light, gossamer linen. The room was warm and I did not shiver. Vaysh was standing at the foot of the bed, clothed in violet, holding a purple, glass vial. He gave it to one of my attendants. "Make it easier for him," he said and turned away. I could hear his footsteps, soft as a cat's, fading down the hallway outside my room. I was turned onto my stomach, arranged neatly, and salve from the vial was applied to my body. It felt cold as ice. I was rolled over and the procedure was repeated; I could hardly keep from laughing.
Laughter through tears; I kept switching from grief to hysteria. "Who is it?" I asked, but they would only shake their silken heads, like slender flowers. With a glass rod, one of them filled me with unguent that spread sleepily its insentient cold through my loins. Perhaps they could not speak. Perhaps he had taken that from them. They straightened my legs and flicked invisible creases from the sheet. I was not afraid. Nervous of the waiting, yes, but not afraid. They stood, one each side of me, by my head, their faces turned to the door. I had expected them to leave.
Then there were footsteps outside, faraway, coming down the hall, brisk but unhurried. Nearer they came and it seemed to take forever. I knew. I knew and my heart was bursting. He was coming. Thiede was coming. Yet I was still surprised when it was him. He came into the room and stood there, where Vaysh had been before, arms folded and the disguised light of enthusiasm in his eyes. I spoke his name.
"Yes," he said. "Do you remember Saltrock, Pellaz?" I nodded at him.
"I remember."
"Was it so long ago I wonder? Can you remember the things I told you?"
"No, not now."
"And the things I didn't tell you?"
"I remember all of them."
"Am I a god to you?"
"No, not that. I don't know what you are."
"Are you ready for me?"
"I can't ever be ... can I?"
"You realize what must be?"
"I think so . . ."
He wanted to say more, he was enjoying it, but then thought better of it. I could see him, his shining robe shifting with subtle colors, his flame eyes. His lips parted to release a Sound. He began to... sing? No. A Sound; like a different language of gentle vibrations. His arms dropped to his sides, his head went up. I could see his eyes... shining. Reflecting light; they were white stars. All the light in the room went dim but for him. My heart! A pounding that sent the blood cataracting to my loins; my heart sucked dry. The Sound filled up the room, rising, becoming louder, more strident. I knew that sound. Knew it, knew it. His face; changing. His neck, cording, twisting, hair writhing, crawling, lifting
"No!" I whispered, in disbelief, in denial, yet I still felt my body call to him. His teeth, his lambent eyes . . . taller. His hair was crackling with orange flames. It could have been Lianvis standing there; the elemental Lianvis of beneath the earth. He was naked, his body coursing with colors; colors I had never seen before, that hurt my eyes. He was above me, hovering, crouching. I tried to move, but his hara held me down. I could see their teeth; they smiled. I screamed in agony, but then in ecstasy; his smoldering, smoky breath bringing me to the lip of the abyss that was lit at its deepest point by a star of pulsing red. Movement there; bats, ravens, demons, all the creatures of the lake of fire rose up to claw my hair; their talons in my flesh that shuddered to a nameless delight. I wanted the pain, craved it; reduced to an animal fury. He filled me with the hot, smoking essence of his incomprehensible soul. It ripped me, scoured me, ate into me like acid. It was melting me apart, the sizzling rain of hell and I screamed, and I screamed again.
Is it a nightmare, is it? When I came back to my senses, I was alone, and at first I thought, "What have I been thinking?" But then I saw that the room was full of smoke, and the smoke was full of the smell of seared flesh. Then I began to moan. It was the right thing to do. I called upon God, "Help me! Help me ..." I was sure I was dying again and it was a slow, lingering death. I did not want to die. Not again, I pleaded, please, not again. I could sense myself ruined. Sense myself used up, burnt out, finished. You have to die! You have to! Vaysh materialized beside me, out of the vapors. His hand hovered over my shoulder.
"Don't try to move," he said.
I could have laughed. Move? Could this charred remnant move? Vaysh was pushing tubes down my throat. "Open the window!" he called, over his shoulder. Cold air sucked the heat from the room and blew away the smoke. Vaysh was touching me with one hand, sitting on the bed. I tried to raise my head. One glimpse was enough. The bed, the pristine whiteness of my bed, was polluted with the dark stains of dried blood. It looked like dried blood. My body was purple and black and blistered.
"Don't move," Vaysh repeated. My eyes felt cracked and shriveled; it was a miracle I could still see. It hurt to close them, yet I longed to do so.
"I don't ever want to have to do this again," Vaysh said to someone I could not see. Disgust filled his voice. I began to slip and Vaysh said, "I'm losing him!" Another voice answered him, calm and confidant. "It proceeds as it should." As it should.
Thiede. I contemplated on his magnificence in the higher spheres. He had brought me back to him from death; this personality. Now he had mutilated me; he held me dangling on the end of a silver thread. Why? But I knew he would not let go.
For days I must have hovered on the threshhold of a second death. Vaysh was in constant attendance. He was there to heal me and he succeeded. Thiede knew that. Vaysh is one of his best. My mind was nearly broken and I retreated deep inside myself, seeking once again the comfortable idiocy of my first days in this place. Yet I could not shut out my senses completely. They drugged my body, but not my mind. Even though I feared insanity, I was aware of everything that happened around me, no matter how hard I tried to escape inside myself. My poor brain, exhausted, stunned, but still laboring on. I made an impossible vow never to speak again, and banished all memory of Cal from my thoughts. It was the only way I could cope.
When they took away the tubes and tried to make me eat, I vomited with uncontrollable force. The tubes were put back.
One day, Vaysh put his hand on my paralyzed legs. "Tomorrow, we shall leave here," he said. I whimpered and wept, and he did not comfort me.
CHAPTER TWO
The symbolism of the thirteenth key
Winter; white, crackling, numbing. Vaysh rode a black horse, I was strapped onto a gray. Behind us, Thiede's marmoreal palace reared like a vast, sparkling bird of prey. Before us, dark canyons wreathed in drifts of snow. The sky above was pale. I had no idea where in the world I was. It was the first time I had ever seen snow, the first time I had ever been this cold. I was anaesthetized almost senseless, unaware of where we were heading and for what purpose. Wrapped in thick furs, strapped with leather, lolling with slack face upon the back of my silvery horse.
I had been given no explanation for anything that had happened to me or for what was to come. That Thiede had a definite plan was obvious, but
I was only his pawn and as such, it was unimportant that I should know what was going on. I was changed for ever; into what I did not yet understand. There had been no mirrors, no words to tell me. Vaysh hardly looked at me. He had my horse on a leading rein. I could see his long, red hair, powdered with white, blowing back on either side of his fur hood, his
straight back; a prince of Wraeththu. All sound was muffled in the pure and crystal landscape. No tracks other than our own marred its virgin shrouds. I sat and dreamed and sat and dreamed, as the sun arched from one horizon to the other. Once darkness fell (but it was never completely dark), we came to a wooden cabin under a sheltering overhang of rock. Icicles fringed its porch; drifts of white fingers reached toward the windows. Vaysh unstrapped me and hauled me to the ground. He had a key to the cabin and dragged me inside, leaving me alone as he went back into the snow to see to the horses. Some of the drugs were beginning to wear off and I began to whimper. I felt so different; distorted, heavy. Crippled and tied into the furs.