Paragenesis: Stories of the Dawn of Wraeththu (52 page)

The three cloaked hara stooped
down by Manticker, inspected him, but they must have known it was
over. Jarad could feel Manticker fading away. The flames of his
fire were not so fierce now; soon that too would die.

One of Wraxilan’s aides had
remained. Jarad did not know the har’s name, because he was rarely
around and somewhat secretive, but he was older than most; an
advisor. Now he glanced to where Jarad and Terzian stood upon the
path. He beckoned them with a jerk of his head. ‘Did you see who
threw that?’ he demanded.

‘No,’ Terzian said. ‘I did not
see it.’

Jarad shook his head. Had he
thrown the knife? He really didn’t know. But there was no blade in
his belt now. Wraxilan would not approve of this unasked-for
assistance. He could fight his own battles. But Terzian must have
seen. Why would he protect Jarad now? They did not know one
another.

One of the hara crouching by
Manticker stood up, threw back the hood to his robe. He looked to
be soume-prevalent, very feminine. His hair was dark, hanging to
his waist. He pointed at Wraxilan. ‘You are cursed,’ he said,
matter-of-factly. ‘You have my word for it.’

Wraxilan uttered a snort and
gestured at Jarad and Terzian. ‘Kill them,’ he said. ‘We don’t want
his witches left alive.’

Terzian moved forward at once,
but Wraxilan’s advisor said sharply, ‘No.’

Wraxilan turned to him swiftly.
‘No?’

The advisor nodded once. ‘They
are Sulh. Leave them be.’ In his words was the unspoken message:
Don’t mess with them
. The Sulh were a foreign tribe, their
hara often found close to phyle leaders and others of high rank.
They were not feared exactly, but they were respected. No one knew
who their leaders were. The advisor addressed the Sulh now. ‘Take
these remains and be gone from this place. Our quarrel is not with
you.’

The Sulh set about lifting
Manticker between them. Parts of him, it seemed, had become
detached. Jarad turned away. He felt disorientated. Something huge
was finishing in his life, something new beginning. The Sulh were
moving away, melting into the darkness. But, Jarad was sure, they
would not forget this night. He would not want to be cursed by a
Sulh.

Feeling attention upon him,
Jarad turned around again. Wraxilan was staring at him, his
expression guarded. ‘Who threw the knife?’ he asked. It was clear
it had to be either Jarad or Terzian, since neither of them had
joined the pursuit. That in itself was unusual behaviour.

Jarad simply stared back.

Wraxilan nodded, sucked in his
cheeks. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘it was the Aghama.’ Then he laughed, a
little crazily.

‘It saved time,’ Terzian said,
‘but the outcome would have been no different.’

‘Wouldn’t it, now?’ Wraxilan
said.

Terzian placed a bunched fist
upon his own chest. ‘You are Archon.’ He bowed his head.

‘Yes.’ Wraxilan stared into the
night, in the direction the hunt had taken, but nothing could be
heard of it now. Embers popped in the fire, sounding like cracking
bones. ‘We must celebrate,’ Wraxilan said. ‘The Archon and his
faithful elite.’ He held out a hand and Terzian took it, kissed it.
Jarad hung back.

Wraxilan looked past Terzian,
directly at him.
And you?
His eyes seemed to say.

Jarad could barely function. He
certainly couldn’t speak. Everything had changed. These hara were
no longer like mindless gang-boys playing at being hard and
street-wise. They had become figures of history, and their words –
every word – would be remembered. This night they had begun a new
future, one that perhaps they might not have had before.

‘It is as it is meant to be,’
Jarad managed to say. But he could not bring himself to bow his
head, or to kiss Wraxilan’s hand. He had played his part.

‘Come with me,’ Wraxilan said
quietly.

‘I will be with you,’ Jarad
replied, ‘but I need some time. I will come to you.’

‘Squeamish, Jarad? Surely
not.’

At the mention of his name,
Jarad heard Terzian draw in his breath. That name was known.

‘Not that,’ Jarad said. ‘This
is... overwhelming. More significant than... I need some time.’

Wraxilan narrowed his eyes.
‘Very well. But don’t take too long.’

Velisarius and Lianvis were
waiting in a doorway, in a narrow alley not far from the hill.
Jarad wasn’t looking for them, but of course they’d been looking
for him. Lianvis uttered a sigh at the sight of him, embraced him.
Jarad remained unyielding in his hold. He stared at Velisarius over
Lianvis’s shoulder. ‘Did you speak to me?’ he asked. ‘In my
mind?’

Velisarius shook his head. ‘No,
but I heard... something. Not words, not even an idea, but...
something.’

‘Who was it?’

Lianvis let go of Jarad,
stepped back. His expression was bleak.

‘Perhaps there is a wider
interest in what happened tonight than we thought,’ Velisarius
replied. He drew in his breath. ‘Our hara are ready to leave.
Wraxilan’s inner circle will be occupied this night. They will not
notice us depart, and then we will simply vanish into the
landscape. Listen...’ He put a hand upon Jarad’s shoulder. ‘You
hear that?’

There were sounds upon the
night, not all of them audible with the physical ear. Songs of
mourning, songs of victory, songs of yearning, the barking of dogs,
the howl of cats, the clamour of metal breaking. ‘They know,’ Jarad
said. ‘They all know.’

‘The writing of history,’
Velisarius said dryly. ‘It’s interesting.’ He paused. ‘You won’t
come with us.’ It wasn’t a question.

‘This isn’t my world,’ Jarad
replied. ‘There is one, but it isn’t here, nor with you.’

Velisarius smiled. ‘I know. We
will remain allies, though, Jarad. Don’t forget that. One day, hara
close to you will question it, but don’t forget.’

‘Jarad,’ Lianvis said, so many
feelings in the simple sound of his name.

‘Be safe,’ Jarad said, reaching
briefly to touch Lianvis’s cheek.

‘I will always know your name,’
Lianvis said. ‘Whatever it becomes.’

‘Go south,’ Velisarius said.
‘
If
you will take advice from me. There are hara waiting for
you. They don’t know it yet, but they are. Uigenna are not the only
way, and neither is mine.’

Jarad laughed coldly. ‘Hara
waiting for me? What am I to do with them?’

‘You will know,’ Velisarius
said. He addressed Lianvis. ‘Come, Viss, we have work to do. We
cannot linger.’

After Velisarius and Lianvis
had gone, Jarad remained where he was, unable to move. What
compunctions coursed through his flesh? He could barely tell.
Something had touched him this night,
controlled
him... or
had it simply been the actions of a part of himself that had become
detached from his conscious being? He blinked up at the sky, so
full of stars. The sky had come back to the earth as the lights of
humanity winked out.

A sudden breeze came down the
alley, scooping up litter and dust in its wake. Jarad would follow
it, go where it led him. As he began to move, he felt as if the
Jarad he’d been before was left standing behind him like a ghost.
He’d stepped out of that shell. And the name came to him then:
You are Ponclast. You always have been. Own the name, and bring
it to our history.

The Future of Our Dark,
Delirious Imaginings

Wendy Darling

I’ve been fascinated with the
future, post-apocalyptic world of Wraeththu since the very first
day I picked up
The Enchantments of Flesh and Spirit
.
Humanity on its way out, decaying cities, electro-mechanical
technology falling to the wayside, and of course
goth-punk-industrial hermaphrodites with jaded attitudes and
magical abilities – what’s not to like? So, really, it’s not
surprising that I’d be among those tossing out the idea of a book
specifically focusing on those early, after-the-fall days.

The idea for this book first
came up around five years ago, back when Storm and several others
were working on the Wraeththu role-playing game book (
Wraeththu:
From Enchantment to Fulfilment
). I was involved as an editor
and idea bouncer-offer (“Wendy, what do you think?”) and as the
game involved role-playing as hara in the early days of Wraeththu,
there was a lot of discussion about those times. How did the first
tribes come about? What kind of turf battles went on? What was it
like for those first hara, for example those living in cities that
were still majority human? And when and how did Wraeththu first
start exploring their magical abilities? Eventually the RPG came to
include a great deal of background information covering these
questions, plus a short story (“A Sickle Blade,” included in this
anthology) illustrating and exploring the origin story of one
particular har.

While the RPG book was still in
production, talk began of soliciting some of the best writers in
the
Wraeththu Mythos
world to write stories set in the first
few years of Wraeththu’s genesis. This went along with an idea we
had about creating follow-ups to the main game book focusing on
individual tribes. Each book was to include a story set amidst the
world of a particular tribe, like the Colurastes, the Sulh, or the
Gelaming. And so we began the process of asking around and did
receive some entries which, as it turns out, we are now finally
publishing in this volume, even though the RPG project itself,
along with the original tribal stories project, fizzled out.

The present collection includes
stories created both specifically for this project, works
commissioned five years ago for the earlier project, plus a couple
of stories which originally appeared online as fan fiction but
which demanded the increased exposure and recognition of print. It
also includes the short story (“The First”) that appeared in the
program book for the original Grissecon convention held in
Stafford, England, back in 2003. There was a contest among fan
fiction writers for whose story would appear in the program and my
entry, written as a follow up to Storm’s seminal story
“Paragenesis” (first in this collection and the origin of its
title), was selected as the winner.

But back to my attraction to
those very early Wraeththu. Images from the first three novels, the
Wraeththu Chronicles
, gripped me and set my mind to wild
imaginings: Seel with his multi-coloured, rag-adorned hair; Irraka
squatting in an old town hall; Cal being called into Wraxilan’s
supermarket-turned-tribal-headquarters and asked to host a pearl. I
could see it all so clearly, both the characters and their
environments, and the images were very appealing.

In my mind’s eye, I imagined
early Wraeththu with the faces, clothes and attitudes of loads of
figures out of early 1980s pop culture – Billy Idol, the gangs of
Mad Max
, musicians in New Wave and Punk bands. If you watch
Depeche Mode’s early videos, from their first ones to up to those
of 1986 or so, you’ll see Martin Gore gradually growing more and
more androgynous. When I first read Swift’s description of Gelaming
dress (“skimpy but complicated”), I immediately thought of Gore’s
outfit in videos like “Master and Servant.” The eye make-up, the
teased, tortured hair, the shiny lips, leather straps and dog
collars – to me, that was Wraeththu.

What’s more, when I got to know
Storm and learned more about where and how she’d been inspired, I
found that she also had been looking to pop culture, especially the
music world. While I got a lot of my impressions from music videos,
Storm, back in the day, was working with actual bands, including
actual proto-Wraeththu! So evidently I got the right idea of
Wraeththu before I even really knew their true inspiration. And
while it’s true that later on, in the
Wraeththu Histories
and in some fan fiction, we see Wraeththu maturing, wearing
“grown-up” clothes and such, I think I will always imagine hara, at
least first-generation hara, as wild androgynous 1980s young
men.

Just as the idea of the
characters caught my imagination, so did Storm’s description of
their environment. In
The Shades of Time and Memory
. Moon’s
wanderings in the City of Ghosts (which I later learned was a
post-apocalyptic Chicago) conjured up the sort of images featured
in the television documentary series
The World Without Us
:
disintegrating skyscrapers, covered in vines, inhabited by wild
animals; alleys turned to streams; museum collections turning to
dust. Other images came to mind as well: post-plague Philadelphia
in
12 Monkeys
, post-nuclear ruins in
Threads
; the
destroyed cities that make up
The Matrix
’s “real” world.
There’s even an H.P. Lovecraft short story I recall about a ruin of
man, devoured by nature.

Post-apocalyptic environments
have a lot of appeal to me, based largely, I speculate, on a
gleeful sort of joy at seeing humanity getting what it deserves.
Nearly all of us are in small or large part guilty of conspiring in
the rapidly accelerating decline of this planet – land, sea, air,
plants, animals, unique human cultural groups. And seeing images or
reading descriptions of the potential consequences of this
destruction – what the world would be like without us or with most
everything destroyed – appeals to me, almost as a sort of
self-flagellation in my head. We’re doing this and this is what may
happen: a message, a warning.

But if the near future is to be
populated by wild, goth-punk androgynous boys with magic powers and
eye makeup, born out of humanity’s downfall, I shouldn’t really be
upset, should I?

Wendy Darling, Co-Editor

May 2010

Early
Wraeththu
Inspirations

Storm Constantine