The Ghosts of Blood and Innocence (13 page)

‘It won’t make any difference,’ Darq said.

‘Perhaps not, but even so.’ Thiede stooped down and took Darquiel’s face between his hands. ‘I will share breath with you. Even if it doesn’t kindle desire, I think you will find it interesting. Also, I must construct some temporary wards to stop spies snooping around in your head.’ With no further preamble, he put his mouth to Darq’s.

This was very different to the kiss Darq had shared with Amelza. For a start, it involved the mingling of breath, and with that came strong psychic impressions. Humans couldn’t achieve this. Darq’s first impression was of hot stone, wet after recent rain, and the smell that came off it; crumbled brick mixed with damp moss. It was a feeling of something incredibly ancient, yet forever new. He was on the battlements of a high castle, his hands on the stone, gazing out over a landscape that went on forever. Then he was walking through a room where everything was blue. It was lined by columns of turquoise. At the far end, the room was open to the elements. Darq walked out onto a balcony. Again, he was high up, and below, at the bottom of cliffs covered in dark-leaved trees, was the ocean. It too was incredibly blue. He could smell brine, but also a tart lemony scent. These were some of Thiede’s memories, perhaps, or his dreams. Darq saw a herd of white horses galloping across the sea. Then they had fishes’ tails and were diving beneath the surface. A tall figure walked past him, visible on the edge of his vision. He turned to see and saw a har with wings whose hands dripped red. Reality shifted, and Darq was running down the room, and there was a hole in the ceiling with steps leading up to it. At the top, a sandy courtyard where severed limbs lay scattered about. The winged har was with him. He said, ‘This is a killing ground.’

Darq gasped. He blinked and the reality of his room in Phade’s tower swung back into focus. Thiede had drawn away from him. ‘There are no sunny vistas in my breath,’ he said, and laughed.

‘Did you see anything in me?’ Darq asked him.

Thiede nodded. ‘Yes. You are very alone.’

‘I like it that way.’

Thiede went towards the door. ‘Until tomorrow, Darquiel. Sleep well.’

Darq slept most of the following day, waking only to discomfort and strange feelings of uncertainty, as if something hideous were about to happen. He felt too lethargic to get up and dress himself, and the thought of food was sickening. What had occurred the previous evening had faded like a dream. Had there really been a voice in his head? He wondered whether, in fact, feybraiha had made him hallucinate. It seemed so long ago that he had walked with Amelza in the nighttime forest and had drunk from the moon in her pool. The feelings he’d had back then must be connected with the few things he’d learned since Thiede’s arrival, but it was beyond him to care. It was as if his entire life had run into a stone wall. He was still reeling from the impact.

Phade came to Darq’s bedroom in the afternoon, accompanied by a har named Ganaril, who lived in a mountain settlement. Ganaril was dressed in clothes the color of pine needles, and his hair had a weirdly mossy sheen.  Clearly, Darq thought, the har spent too much time among the trees. Ganaril had hosted a son, who had gone through feybraiha the previous year. Darq submitted to a cursory examination from this har. He wanted somehar to tell him this feybraiha inconvenience would all go away.

Ganaril merely frowned and spoke to Phade, who was standing with folded arms on the other side of the room. ‘You say he started this yesterday?’ Ganaril asked.

Phade nodded.

‘It’s very strange – I’d say accelerated. It took our son Faril a few weeks to reach this stage.’

‘What stage?’ Darq asked quickly.

‘Heat and swelling in the soume-lam suggest you’re ready for aruna,’ Ganaril said shortly. ‘But that is unusual. I’m not sure.’

‘But otherwise, he is normal?’ Phade asked.

Ganaril nodded. ‘All looks in order to me, but I’m no real expert.’

‘And after this aruna I’ll be back to how I was?’ Darq asked.

‘You’ll feel better,’ Ganaril replied. ‘I can send Faril to talk to you, if you like.’

‘No.’ Darq pulled the bedclothes over himself. ‘I know what I need to know.’

Ganaril gave him a narrow-eyed glance. ‘Well, if you change your mind…’

‘Thank you,’ Darq said, and heard in his own voice the tone of dismissal.

Ganaril inclined his head politely, and Phade ushered him out of the room.

Sooner rather than later: that suited Darq fine. He wanted to be free of the carping, whining interloper in his head.

Phade made a swift reappearance. ‘I know that Thiede has spoken to you,’ he began.

‘Yes,’ Darq said. ‘I’m happy with the arrangement.’

‘OK, well in that case, he’ll no doubt come to see you later.’

‘No,’ Darq said. ‘I’ll find him. Tell him that. Outside. Not in here. I want this to happen in the landscape; it’s what’s meant for me.’

Phade adopted a darker tone. ‘You know you shouldn’t wander around on your own, especially now.’

The last thing Darq wanted to deal with was Phade’s over-protectiveness. He tried to keep his voice level. ‘Nothing bad can happen to me at the moment. I’m sure of it. Tell Thiede I’ll find him tonight.’

Phade shook his head. ‘You are quite possibly mad, but if Thiede is content with your suggestion, it’s between you and him. If I ever wanted any real proof you were no ordinary har, now I have it: I can’t imagine anyhar wanting to take aruna with Thiede. I imagine it would be like jumping into molten metal.’

‘And when I come out of the metal, it’ll go hard, and I’ll have really safe armor,’ Darq said.

Phade smiled. ‘Let’s hope that’s the case!’

Thiede did not come to Darq’s room as Phade predicted. Instead, one of the househara came to deliver a message, to say that Thiede was agreeable to Darq’s plan. That was all; no other details. Darq, in a kind of delirium, had no idea what had inspired him to make that request, or how he’d go about finding Thiede later. At one time, it would always have been Zira who delivered messages of that type. Not any more. He wondered what Phade had told Amelza’s family. Did Zira know that Darq had hurt her? Or was Phade keeping him away so that Darq didn’t have to answer any awkward questions? And what of Olivia? Wistfully, Darq wished he could see her now. She would, he was sure, understand more about the horrors of feybraiha than Phade. If only Amelza were here too, to lighten things with abrasive comments and laughter. Darq wondered where she was and how she was doing. He’d done wrong to her, and had tipped his world upside-down with his arrogant pride.

At sundown, Darq drank three glasses of water one after the other, from a jug that had been left for him. He sat on the edge of his bed, fully clothed, but with bare feet. The automatic movement of raising his arm and swallowing the liquid was calming. He felt he could do it for eternity. When the jug was empty, he stood up and stretched. There were no voices in his head, just a high-pitched humming. His face felt very hot.

The tower seemed empty as he walked along its dusk-dark corridors, heading for the outside. Perhaps hara withdrew at the sound of his feet and hid themselves behind closed doors. Even the dogs were silent in the yard. Darq walked beneath the shadow of the great gate and onto the road that led down to the town and beyond. He could see orange and yellow lights in the fields where the horse breeders were camped, and now the thin strains of music reached him: the sound of a fiddle, the cardiac beat of a hand-drum. Every sense was especially alert. He realised he felt greedy for something Thiede could give him that was beyond mere knowledge. After tonight, his life would make sense. He would
know.

His feet led him to the path that led to the moon pool; it seemed the most appropriate place. If Thiede was not there, Darq planned to lie down on the cold grass and wait for what might happen next. If the hunters came for him, so be it. He was utterly without fear.

He walked into the glade and it was full of the cold crystal light of the stars. It fell down upon a ghostly form sitting cross-legged next to the pool: a luminous figure with a veil of hair that shone red even in the colorless starlight. Thiede looked young, like a har not much above Darq’s own age. Darq was not surprised. He supposed Thiede to possess several other unusual abilities.

‘Come to me,’ Thiede said, and his voice too was different; more wistful, less commanding.

Darq went to stand over him and didn’t say anything. Thiede was naked but for his hair. His skin had a matte satiny sheen, and glowed slightly, as if starlight was attracted to him and could not escape.

‘I was not incepted and have never experienced feybraiha,’ Thiede said. ‘I had no rituals, no formal recognition. I just
was.
Because of what I am, I am alone. There are few who can tolerate intimacy with me.’

‘What are you?’ Darq asked. He suspected the question was desired.

‘I was the first of all Wraeththu,’ Thiede said simply. ‘There were others, but they…
failed
.’

Darq squatted down. ‘The first… but he is a god, he is the Aghama.’

‘Aghama is an idea. It is me and yet it is not. It’s a part of me that exists in the minds of hara as a god, as a dehar. It’s separate from me in most respects. Wraeththu created Aghama as I created them.’

‘Are you my father or my hostling?’ Darq asked.

‘No, but we are in some way related,’ Thiede replied. He took a deep breath. ‘Darquiel, I’ve been thinking since our last meeting. There’s something I wish for you to know.’

Darq nodded and settled himself more comfortably on the grass. This was more than he’d dared hope for.

‘For many years, Wraeththu pondered how and perhaps why they had come to be. At first, I believed my existence was accidental; a freak birth that somehow kick-started a new evolutionary step for humanity. Other hara felt otherwise, including some who are very wise. I ignored their thoughts as wishful thinking. But so many things have happened since, I’ve come to the conclusion I was wrong. We
were
created by something, or someone.’

Darq nodded in encouragement for Thiede to continue.

‘Humans lived for the main part in the prison of their senses; they believed that what they perceived was all that is. Those who felt differently were often regarded as heretics or lunatics, mad fringe-folk who had more imagination than sense. A few sensed the truth, I think.

‘I have a friend, who is named Malakess har Sulh. He is High Codexia of the Library of Kyme, on the island of Alba Sulh, to the west of this continent. He and his colleagues collect as much information as they can from the ruins of human civilization, concerning the more controversial theories that certain human scholars devised. The Sulh are looking for seeds of truth. I, on the other hand, experience them.’

‘Who created us and why?’ Darq asked, fearing Thiede’s pause signaled the end of the revelations.

Thiede shrugged. ‘I have yet to find out. Whoever did it has hidden themselves completely. And as to why they did it, who can say? But that’s not what I want to talk to you about.’

Darq frowned. ‘Then what?’

‘Worlds
are power sources,’ Thiede said. ‘Some beings can tap into and drink the life essence of a living, breathing world. No doubt there are beings beyond
their
perception that drink of them too. But as Wraeththu, all we need to concern ourselves with is those who stand above us in the hierarchy of creation. In return for sustenance, our world is fed with a different kind of energy that is creative and inspirational. It’s responsible for all the greatest breakthroughs in understanding and awareness. Under normal circumstances, the inhabitants of a world would remain unaware of this transaction. But something is happening that has changed that situation.’

Thiede reached out and put a long-fingered hand on one of Darq’s thighs. ‘When you were created, it was at the conclusion of what amounts to a fairly small skirmish in a war for power. Those who have stood over us for millennia are being challenged for dominance, mainly because of us – Wraeththu. We are greater than humanity. We
have the potential to perceive far more of reality than creatures of our level of existence would generally possess.’

Darq was aware of the painful beat of his heart. He hardly dared breathe, in case the slightest sound reminded Thiede he should keep silent.

Thiede smiled, probably having interpreted Darq’s feelings. ‘I said I wouldn’t speak of your parents, and I still won’t, in any great detail, but I’ve decided you should know that you were conceived deliberately. Your parents acted in haste and ignorance, obeying a drive without any comprehension of its source or reason. You were created as a magical creature, the sum of the essence of three hara, not two. Your body is a vessel that attracted a potent soul. You can’t remember any of this, because the rules of incarnation decree that all previous states of being are not recalled. But you can look upon yourself as an embodiment, or avatar, of the world itself; a concentration of its energies. Most of this potential is yet locked inside you, and should remain there. You are a beacon to those we should look upon as our allies – fearsome though they may be – and also those who are opposed to them. You should understand there is no compassion in our allies; we are a precious resource to them, that’s all, but they will defend us as long as it’s viable to do so. ‘

Darq stared at Thiede, wide-eyed. ‘And this is why you sent me here?’

Thiede nodded. ‘Yes. I’ve kept you here with Phade to protect you, to keep you from this bigger picture until you are mature and able to hold your own ground. I’m still unsure as to whether you should ever step forward to take part in any confrontation; you could be used against us by either side. But I have listened to my heart and it has spoken. This is why I’m telling you these things.’

‘Thank you,’ Darq said. ‘I will think about them.’

Thiede smiled gently. ‘You’re such a grave soul Darq; you should enjoy a little light.’

Darq grimaced, then shook his head. He did not want to discuss his state of being; it hardly interested him. ‘I want to tell you something too,’ he said. ‘Something that happened to me when I was very young.’