The Moonshawl: A Wraeththu Mythos Novel (33 page)

And so the second part of the
Wyvern history began, which I’ll write as faithfully to what Medoc related as I
can recall.

‘I remember that when we rode to Meadow Mynd to take
our revenge, it was as if the wind itself had taken on a voice, so great was the
clamour. We shrieked and howled and sang. News of the undefeated humans had
reached the ears of local harish commanders, and they didn’t take the news
lightly. From their perspective, if humans came to think they could take a
stand against hara and win, it would make Wraeththu’s task to control Alba Sulh
more difficult. The Wyverns – my family – therefore had to be contained. The
next time hara flung themselves at the Mynd’s protective wall, it wouldn’t be a
motley bunch of random, loosely-allied phyles; it would be an organised attack,
led by Malakess, the highest-ranking har in the area.’

I had to interrupt, just to make
sure. ‘Malakess? Do you mean the har who became High Codexia of Kyme? He is...
was... a friend of mine.’

Medoc shrugged, clearly
irritated his narrative had been interrupted. ‘That I can’t tell you, tiahaar,
only that this was the commander’s name.’

I apologised and indicated he
should continue.

‘The harish leaders were
interested in people like my brothers and me, because we were... well...
educated, and sons of a fairly powerful human family.’ He raised his hands,
perhaps at Rinawne’s expression of disapproval. ‘I know how that might sound,
but trying to establish organisation within the nascent Wraeththu tribes wasn’t
easy. Hara were needed as figureheads, hara whom others would be glad to
follow. We – and the incepted Mantels – were exactly the kind of hara Malakess
and his fellow leaders were looking for, since those who’d been incepted with
us had gravitated towards us, probably simply because they knew us. Both the
Mantels and the Wyverns had protected people for a long time. Newly-incepted
hara couldn’t help but remember that. They trusted us. Kinnard, Peredur and I were
the only remaining Wyverns, since our brother Gwyven had not survived
inception. The Mantels, perhaps a stronger breed than us, had lost none to the
inception knife. Malakess held all of us in high regard. He included us in his
plans to subdue the remnants of our human families.’

‘And you... just... went along
with that?’ Rinawne asked, his eyes wide, further disapproval oozing from him.
‘You just...
killed
them, even children?’

‘You have to bear in mind,’
Medoc said patiently, looking directly at Rinawne rather than at me, ‘that in
those days newly-incepted hara were savages. In frenzied euphoria, we had cast
off everything about ourselves we considered human, and this included ties to
our families. We were young, and believed ourselves to be superhuman, capable
of anything. Humanity represented everything that was wrong with the world – we
sought to reclaim it. We weren’t wrong, but our methods were. It was destined
the world would become ours – we didn’t have to slaughter to get it – but we
didn’t know that then.’

‘But...’ Rinawne had no idea
what the early days had been like. So easy now for him to judge those who’d
lived through that madness.

Medoc sighed. ‘Look, I’m not
going to go into excruciating detail about what happened to our human families,
because I’m sure you can imagine it. Every single one of them, regardless of
age or gender, was killed.’ He looked at me and said bitterly, ‘That is the
shame of first generation hara. Is there one of us who wasn’t part of that
attempted genocide? No. We were all responsible. Is that not so, Ysobi?’

‘Yes,’ I said simply, my mouth
dry, forcefully repressing unpleasant memories. ‘Terrible scenes live within the
minds of all who created our race.’

‘We made a slaughterhouse of
Meadow Mynd,’ Medoc said. ‘We left the bodies where they lay. Friends who’d
been incepted with us took from Kinnard and me the task of disposing of our
blood kin. They did this without being asked, because they
felt
for us.
A cowardly way on our part, because we did not demur. We wouldn’t have the
blood of our sisters on our hands, but neither would we save them.’

‘Did you feel
nothing
for
them?’ Rinawne asked.

‘We felt very little,’ Medoc
said. ‘Only that eradicating humanity was essential. We were half mad with the
way we’d changed, conflicting personalities raging through us and the worst of
both genders bursting out. It’s impossible to explain to you really, because I
can’t go back inside the head of that har I was. But I suppose we must’ve cared
in some ways, otherwise we’d not have flinched from doing the killing
ourselves. Vivi was a different matter... I had no care for her then, and don’t
now, but the others... my mother...’ He shook his head. ‘We never found her.’

Rinawne shifted nervously beside
me, but I pressed my leg against his, sent an arrow of mind touch.
Not now.

‘Deerlip Hall had already
fallen,’ Medoc continued, ‘but all that consumed us, as we cut our way to the
heart of the Mynd, was the dying screams of those who had been under our
protection, the inceptees who Vivi and Thorne had stolen and let die. Their
pain and terror had reached out to us through the ethers. We could not save
them but we were there to avenge them.’ Here, Medoc paused and poured himself
more ale. He drank slowly, his eyes on his tankard, while Rinawne and I waited,
almost holding our breath, for him to carry on.

‘What you really want to know
about is Peredur, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Now I’ll tell you. We knew he was still
alive, because we and Bryce Mantel, the erstwhile eldest son of that family,
could hear him. Peredur called to our minds, in our dreams, as fragments of
sound upon the waking air. This had almost driven Bryce mad, because he loved
Peredur. They had come together very soon after inception. Bryce’s only
objective that day was to reach his beloved, come what may. If armies of iron
had stood in his path, he’d have cut his way through them.

‘But Kinnard and I weren’t
without our own perception of our brother’s fate. The cries of Peredur’s spirit
were a raw shout in our minds; they haunted us constantly. We couldn’t shut him
out. We knew he’d been maimed horribly,
unspeakably,
even if we weren’t
sure of the exact details. We knew Peredur wanted to die but still lived on.
Kinnard, particularly, couldn’t stand the thought of this. He wanted to get to
Peredur as desperately as Bryce did, but not for the same reason.’

Medoc drew in a shuddering
breath. ‘You have to understand that there was no way in a merciful world that
Peredur should have survived. You don’t have the full story about what Vivi did
to him, but we found out... later, from the unincepted boys we took from the
Mynd. She took his eyes the first day, his ouana-lim the second. On the third
she... it was a torch of burning tar... So much damage.’ He grimaced. ‘Every
day she intended to remove or ruin another part of him.’ Now he paused to
swallow, visibly nauseated. ‘When we rode into that courtyard of death, Kinnard
did what I would have done if he had not been the one with a bow. He shot
Peredur in the chest. He was a good shot, always had been...’

There was a silence then,
although we could still hear the harlings playing outside beside the water.
Rinawne reached out to touch one of Medoc’s hands where they were clasped on
the table.

Medoc pulled his hand away before
Rinawne could touch him and continued. ‘Bryce... he simply rode through the
bodies, the limbs, the chunks of meat on the bloody ground. It was like time
had stopped. He cut Peredur’s body from the post and rode away with it. You can
understand then why he felt the way he did about us.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Bryce was...
is
Mossamber Whitemane, isn’t he?’

‘He was. There was never a great
love between our two families, because the Wyverns had always felt the Mantels
were beneath them. Circumstances had made us reluctant allies. But the reason
Bryce hated us so much wasn’t just because Kinnard shot the har he loved. It
was because of what happened afterwards. Peredur was still alive.’

‘He survived all that?’ I asked,
shocked.

Medoc closed his eyes briefly
and nodded. ‘For a time, but there were other matters to deal with that drove
the Mantels and us even further apart.’

‘Ah, the political side,’ I
said.

Medoc nodded. ‘Malakess wanted
to organise hara in the Gwyllion area. The idea originally was that Kinnard and
I – with the Mantels in high positions within the community – would lead the
newly-created phyle, but from the Deerlip domain. Bryce Mantel would hear none of
that, and neither would we, in particular concerning our headquarters. We felt
strongly we should be allowed to return to Meadow Mynd and establish it as the centre
of command in the area. The place had suffered considerable damage, the outer
protective walls had been torn down, but we wanted to restore the house, most
of which still stood. You have to appreciate that ours was an old family, who
had held that land for centuries. We had no intention of letting it go and were
prepared to fight for it, even if that meant the risk of offending Malakess.
Kinnard insisted that local newly-incepted hara would trust and follow us more
than they would the Mantels, and that Meadow Mynd had been the heart of the
community for a long time. Wiping away the worst aspects of the past was one
thing, but equally important was a sense of foundation, of familiarity, on
which to build anew.

‘Malakess was eventually swayed
by Kinnard’s words, and agreed we could return to the Mynd. Bryce and his hara would
be accountable to us, because it was important to establish a hierarchy, a
leadership. Malakess insisted that personal feelings must be put aside, for the
sake of Wraeththu as a whole. Resentfully, the Mantels agreed to the
arrangement, on the understanding they would be able to retain their domain as well.

‘Around this time the Mantels
began to create their phyle identity, making themselves clearly separate from
the Wyverns. We adopted Wyvachi as a tribal name. The Mantels took the name
Whitemane and, as was generally the custom, also took new personal names. But
we didn’t do that.’

‘Why not?’ Rinawne asked.

‘Because the names our mother
had given us were ancient, mythical. We felt they suited our new being as much
as the old, for we were very much drawn to the ancient history of our land. Our
choice over names was perhaps – unacknowledged, as it had to be back then – our
tribute to our murdered family.’  He took another drink. ‘Anyway, the
negotiations had taken a few days, and by the time the future of Meadow Mynd had
been established, we wanted to deal with family matters, and Kinnard wasn’t shy
of asking Malakess for support. We knew Peredur had survived and was being kept
in the Whitemane domain. We found this abominable, because we were aware what
state he was in, and no amount of Wraeththu healing could put that right.’

‘Did you have no healers?’
Rinawne asked. I could tell he didn’t like hearing about Peredur’s injuries and
had asked the question perhaps to delay details he could barely cope with.

‘Yes, we did,’ Medoc said. ‘Hara
had been forced quickly to learn how to heal back then, although our abilities
were primitive, not fully understood. Even those drawn to the healing path were
merely exploring their capabilities rather than being masters of them. Peredur
was dying, but slowly, kept alive yet not mended by the arts of the Whitemane
healers. Nohar knew how long it would take for him to die. Can you imagine how
we felt about that? We asked that Peredur be returned to us. Mossamber refused.
At this point, Malakess withdrew his support, as he felt the matter was outside
his jurisdiction. He told us emphatically that even though Peredur was a blood
relative of ours, the ethos of Wraeththu was to discard old human
relationships, even when family were incepted together. Everyone was har, one
family. Peredur was Mossamber’s chesnari, and it was Mossamber who should have
last word on matters concerning him, should Peredur not be in a condition to
make his own choices. Human blood ties didn’t count. We were furious about
this, and some of us even considered trying to take Peredur by force, but even
Kinnard was sensible enough to realise we should push Malakess no further. The
truth was, the Wyvachi had come out of the conflict well. Perhaps Peredur was a
sacrifice we had to make, horrible though that was to us.’

Medoc rubbed his hands over his
face. ‘So life went on,’ he said wearily. ‘We burned the dead, we cleaned the
land, we rebuilt, we organised, we created a community. We took in refugees,
many damaged in mind and body. But we were always mindful of Peredur, a deep and
suppurating wound we could not heal. We felt he should be with us.
e woulHe
But Peredur had not asked to come home
– we had to suppose he was capable of at least making himself clear about that.
And he would not die.
The seasons passed, our community grew and then...
Then news came to us, not directly from the Whitemanes, but clearly Mossamber
wanted us to know...’

Medoc stared at us for a few
moments. ‘I have not spoken of Peredur himself, what he was,
how
he was.
As a child, he’d been fey, somewhat effeminate, yet brimming with life and
energy that was infectious. You could not help but love him, in a weirdly
helpless way. When we were incepted, he became this...
radiant
, almost
ethereal creature. I can describe it no other way. I saw from the beginning he
was made to be har, perhaps had partly already been so, simply waiting for the
day of inception. We were all sure he was destined to be a great leader, but in
a spiritual sense. What most interested him about his new being was the otherworld.
I remember him once saying to me, “Meddy, we’ve become
other
. We’ve
become what I’ve always sensed was out there in the land. Elemental.”