Paragenesis: Stories of the Dawn of Wraeththu (23 page)

With one immense difference.
Well, never mind the music and the alcohol, the scents and the
vanity among these refined and stylish beings; in their heart of
hearts they were an order charged with a holy mission. But as I
discovered the third night I was there, the place was awash with
sex when we didn’t look.

We were kept apart in an annex
that had bare and clean cells, and the Gelaming had sprawled to
live and work everywhere else, but on that night curiosity got the
better of me, and I went to investigate, and I found them at it
everywhere, even in the church, where three of them were doing
something that involved a stream of clear light that looked holy
beyond doubt. I was extremely repulsed and incredibly aroused at
the same time, and I settled down to do some thorough peeping, my
hand between my legs, when Vadriel grabbed me from behind and
turned me around.

“This is not yet for you,
little monklet Makari,” he said, using the silly moniker his boss
had coined for me that first day.

“You wait just a few more
nights, and then it shall all be yours. You just wait.”

His eyes that I knew to be as
pale blue as the streaks in his hair by day bored into mine, now
shining silver in the eerie light from the ceremony. He took me by
my chin, and then he kissed me, deeply, on the mouth.

I had never been kissed before,
but it seemed to me that beyond the kiss I could taste something
more, something holy, Gelaming-style. Vadriel was cool and clear,
his taste inexplicably sweet – I wanted to sink into his arms there
and then. I collapsed against him, and delicious, unknown shudders
wracked my whole body.

I regained my senses, burrowed
against Vadriel’s hard chest, and felt thoroughly ashamed of myself
– I knew what I’d just done, although only by hearsay. Vadriel
seemed amused. He kissed me again, sweetly, and showed me a pale
amber light that had, inexplicably, formed into a perfect little
ball on the palm of his hand. Tenderly, he blew it away to join the
gigantic stream of light those three hara in the church were
raising. All the holy pictures, I could see now, were gone, and all
the walls and vaulted ceilings were painted a brilliant silver.

At the end of this week, we
were incepted. Orien did it, the boss, who seemed to be their top
priest as well, some sort of a harish bishop or metropolitan.
Everyone was gathered in the former church; it was midnight, and
there were seventeen of us, purged and scrubbed, in white robes. We
were made to kneel down, we were given some holy substance to
drink. Hara came and shaved off our hair at the sides of our heads.
Hara sang and shouted ecstatically, and then Orien came forth from
nowhere. He went to the first of us, my youngest brother; he had a
knife suddenly, and he cut his own arm, and then my brother’s arm.
He pressed them together, the blood mingling, and then my brother
collapsed into the arms of the hara hovering around him, and was
carried away over the heads of the assembly, with the utmost
reverence, like a holy object. So Orien went down the line of
us.

I was last, and I was growing
nervous as one after the other of my companions was carried away to
his new destiny. I looked around the church for Vadriel, but he was
nowhere to be found among those throngs of ecstatically chanting
Gelaming. Then it was finally my turn, and I knew no more.

Of the seventeen of us, four
didn’t make it. They’d all been physically young enough, Orien
explained to us survivors later, but they’d probably been too set
in their monkish ways already for their minds to submit to the
change. All four from my family made it, though.

I don’t want to bore you with
another Althaia-and-Feybraiha-story; you all know what happened to
me in those nights. And you probably guessed that it was Vadriel
who came for me after the pains had stopped, and how he took me all
the way now, and how he was sweet beyond words.

We were taught many things, and
some of them even by Orien himself, and some of them we’d already
learned as monks, but we listened politely. The thing about the
sex, which they called aruna, of course, was utterly different; we
were encouraged to participate in anything that took our fancy. The
only thing that took my fancy was Vadriel, but he gently
discouraged me. The way of the Wraeththu, he told me sweetly when I
came back for more on the second night, was not the way of
humankind; we weren’t clinging or possessive, and I was to get as
much experience as I could. Did I tell you he was sanctimonious? So
I turned away from him, disappointed but determined to acquit
myself as was expected of me, and I went after anyone who wasn’t on
the trees by the count of three, so I could return to Vadriel and
brag about it, and he’d take me back into his bed after I’d assured
him what a worldly har I’d become. It worked every time, and there
were many, many times during that winter.

And of course we were given new
names; this was the fourth one in my young life, and I can hardly
remember it nowadays. It was something long and convoluted, ending
on “–iel”, of course, Arconiel or Arcadiel, I honestly don’t
remember which. I was shortened to Arc soon enough, and Vadriel
secretly still called me Makari in bed, and I didn’t have the heart
to tell him that even that hadn’t been my name for long.

In the spring, all thirteen of
us had our caste raised to Neoma, and we were put to work. We were
to return to St. John’s and tell our former brethren there of what
the hara really were, and get them to tell us as much about the
land around the holy places, of rocks and waters and groves, as
they possibly knew; their traditions, Vadriel told me, would be
invaluable for building the new city of the Gelaming, but they
probably wouldn’t tell outsiders, hence us with a foot in both
worlds.

When I came to St. John’s, I
learned that Chrysostom had died during the winter, and the others
from my family monastery had been absorbed into the communal life.
Only my extremely myopic brother was still painting icons
full-time, and he did it with incredible diligence and love, tiny
icons with the most precise details he couldn’t possibly see, but
incredibly did.

Our uncles and cousins and
brothers took us back, only marvelling in passing what had become
of us; we were of the Chrysostom people first and foremost, and
then we were hara, which to them was just another passing state. We
lived on our own at the fringes of the community, falling in with
our relatives when we had questions to ask or new knowledge to
contribute, but for most of the others, things weren’t so easy.
Mind you, nobody ever asked for the four that were lost; monkish
lives had been ephemeral and fleeting since time out of mind. But
these nine ex-monks had become something alien and slightly
repulsive to their former brethren; the Gelaming were just
heathens, but these were renegades, and as time told on them, they
were told nothing more, and one after the other drifted back to
Phaonica, as the headquarters were known by now. Only the four of
us were still wandering back and forth, singing and praying with
the monks, and taking aruna with the Gelaming, as we wended our way
between the two worlds.

But we were only hara, after
all, and one night my myopic brother caught Vadriel and me making
love.

We were really making love by
then, all experience-gathering pretext almost forgotten, tenderly,
trustingly, with deep feeling. We never dared call it love aloud,
but it was.

My brother knew I’d changed
beyond his imagination, but the moonlight concealed nothing, and he
did wear his glasses, the poor silly thing, and he was honestly
disgusted. He couldn’t believe that I’d changed so much with just a
little prodding from a drop of Orien’s powerful blood, he believed
the Gelaming had cut and sliced me and added bits, and he was sick
on the spot, and wouldn’t talk to any of us afterwards.

All thirteen of us were given
new things to do now, and we’d mostly become Gelaming fair and
square now.

Not I, and the reason for that
was as follows.

Vadriel was building a harbour,
right? At the site of our former monastery, remember? And I was at
it with him, witnessing the destruction of my own home day to day,
and it hurt me, but I kept quiet for Vadriel’s sake. And he needed
me for his work, too, relying on my knowledge of the place that was
extensive, young as I was. I knew where the rock was brittle and
where it was stable; I knew my way around and I could tell when the
shortest way wasn’t the fastest. So we built into the living rocks
of my former home the beautiful harbour of Immanion, as those of
you who have been there know it today.

Well, almost.

When the summer was over and
autumn came, Orien came to inspect our work, and he brought with
him the red-headed har who’d been there that first day, and that
august individual was not content. He was sketching into the air
with his long fingers, showing Orien and Vadriel how he wanted
things straighter, more sweeping, less clinging to the land, more
leading to the sky. I couldn’t hear them; I hung back with all the
others who’d worked at the project, looking worriedly at the hara
sitting on their horses in the centre. He criticised for the better
part of an hour, and then, while Orien and he passed on to inspect
the next project, we builders sat dejectedly at the trestle tables
we’d set up for the feast, unable to take even a single bite.

And then we went away to the
former monk farm where we’d made our temporary home while we were
working at the harbour, and there we slouched about, and got drunk,
and fell into bed at some stage with nobody in particular.

So I missed my last night with
Vadriel.

Because, the next morning when
we returned to our building site to try and find out how we could
rectify the faults our masters had found with our work, it was all
done. Overnight, the rock had hardened in places where there’d only
ever been shale, and stairs that had been curved and humble had
become sweeping and grand, and quays that had been sturdy and
natural had become straight and jutting. There was nothing left for
us to do. Nothing at all, it was all finished and over with.

Vadriel, far from taking
exception at this, was humbled. Those mighty Nahir-Nuri had done in
a night what he couldn’t accomplish in a summer, and they’d showed
him how small his faith had been and how far he’d strayed from the
path of the Gelaming – he stealthily looked at me when he said
that. And then he rode off, without even kissing me goodbye, to go
and beg those masters to permit him to learn at their feet.

I did tell you he had a streak
of extreme sanctimony to him, didn’t I?

He later built temples and
towers for the Gelaming all over the world, but I never saw him
again.

For the first time in my life,
I was totally at loose ends, with nobody to tell me what to do, and
nobody needing me for anything. The monks lived their secluded
lives at St. Johns, and they actually do so still for all that I
hear: a few confused elders and some sturdy middle-aged brothers,
in a secret and forbidden park somewhere in shining Immanion,
hidden from all eyes, hidden from a world that has changed beyond
their recognition. I have never been back.

And the Gelaming were no longer
interested in me; I was totally welcome to work and play with them,
take aruna with whoever and contribute my share, build myself a
home and perhaps find a partner, raise my caste and have some
pearls as the years went by. I could have trained for the military,
if I had wanted to; I could have trained in the new disciplines of
Grissecon or made beautiful things by hand. But I was just a
builder, hanging on to see the former wilderness of my home
transform to shining Immanion as we know it today, and feeling
thoroughly cheated.

I had sacrificed all that had
been asked of me, like the good little monk I still was at heart. I
had sacrificed myself first and foremost, then my home, destroying
it with my own hands to build something new and infinitely more
splendid, but that had been found lacking and summarily corrected.
I had first sacrificed my family to be with my chesnari, and then I
had to give him up so he was able to grow to his full potential (as
he saw it, the sanctimonious little sod), and I was sacrificing
myself every day to the new city, and every night my body to the
ideals of the Gelaming community; every night my body was a holy
vessel for the power of Wraeththukind, but my heart was empty and
ashes, and shortly before the shimmering city was completed, the
night before the inauguration of the building called Hegalion, when
everyone was celebrating and taking aruna all over the place, I
slunk away, a tiny blot of unhappiness removing himself from its
brilliant face.

Specimen
16

Andy Bigwood

I looked at the blood pooling
in my left hand and the ornate knife that I held in my right,
beautiful blood, ruby red, full of promise and chaos. My
gift...

‘Sixteen....’ said an eager
voice.

I gasped in pain as the
inevitable migraine took hold; instinctively cradling my hand
against my chest so that they couldn’t see.

“You ok back there, kid?” asked
Joe, the paramedic in the passenger seat, peering through the glass
partition that separated us.

“I’m fine” I lied, waiting
until the paramedic had turned back around before checking my left
hand.

The thin cut-shaped rash was
already fading away, as I’d expected. I’d had that particular dream
before, and the imaginary wound never lasted long.

I’d gone to the doctor a few
days ago to get aspirin for the headaches. I’d been careful
not
to tell him about hearing voices or dreaming about
knives and self-harm. I hadn’t expected an ambulance and a trip to
a medical research centre