The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure Read online

  Flick grabbed hold of Cal’s jaw with one hand. Cal stared back at him, passive. Flick knew he shouldn’t be doing this. It would hurt Seel and that was what Cal wanted. He wanted to hurt hara who cared about him.

  But he can’t hurt me, Flick thought. And he respects it. That’s the strangest thing.

  ‘I once wanted to find Immanion, the Gelaming city,’ Cal said. ‘I wanted to find it with Pell, to find Paradise. Take me there. Now.’

  Flick laughed softly. ‘Cal, from what I know of you, I suspect you’re quite capable of being king of Immanion one day. You could flirt your way there.’ He lowered his head and breathed over Cal’s closed eyes. He slid a hand over Cal’s starved flank. ‘We have small paradises,’ he said. ‘This is one of them.’

  Chapter Five

  It was not just Cal’s physical appearance that made him so attractive. Flick realised Cal’s true charm was the way he could make a har feel. Walking out of Cal’s room the following morning, Flick felt about ten years older and six feet taller. He had been manipulated, played with and – in one sense – abused, but he’d never felt so good about himself. Cal could turn his attractiveness on and off at will – Flick had witnessed that the previous night. He could make you feel special, better than anyhar else, and when you were with him, you could tell he meant it. That was powerful magic. Or it was like the camouflage that desert creatures were born with. It was Cal’s method of survival.

  Seel was already up when Flick went into the kitchen. Flick steeled himself for hostility, but Seel only grinned rather sadly at him, and said, ‘Was it good?’

  ‘OK,’ Flick replied, sidling to the cooking range.

  ‘That good.’ Seel shook his head. ‘We have to be careful. What was I thinking of?’

  ‘Seel…’

  ‘No, listen. There’s something not right. I remember what it was like before – this division, this playing hara off against one another. Just watch out. It could be a trap.’

  Flick said nothing. Half of him suspected Seel might be right. At least the Seel sitting at the kitchen table today was more like the har he used to be. Cal had reached inside him, searching for Seel’s heart, but he’d grabbed his anger by mistake. He’d crumpled it into a ball and thrown it away.

  Cal slept for most of the day, and while he was sleeping Flick resolved not to play Cal’s game. He didn’t want to be part of it. When Cal eventually emerged, heavy-eyed and languorous, he behaved as if nothing had happened the night before, which had to be for the best. Perhaps, in Cal’s own mind, something had fallen into place. They’d simply helped each other.

  Orien put in an appearance that evening, to tell Cal he couldn’t contact Thiede, but that he’d keep trying.

  ‘I didn’t expect anything else,’ Cal said. ‘You don’t have to try again, not on my account.’

  Seel and Flick exchanged a glance at that point. Something was better, wasn’t it? This couldn’t just be a deceptive calm.

  While Orien was still talking to Seel, Flick went out to see to the horses. He stood in the gloom of the musty stable, taking in all the warm scents and the comfortable sounds of contented animals snorting and munching hay. It was like a warm giant hand around him. Then came a breath of cold air and there were living hands on his shoulders, in his hair. He turned round. ‘No, Cal. No.’

  He could have pulled away at any time. He could have been cold and harsh, but it was beyond him. Cal was using his strongest magic.

  An unspoken vow passed between them that night. Their liaisons would henceforth be kept secret. If Seel suspected, he did not say so. Cal wanted to revisit all the sites of significance for him. It was as if he was trying to imprint Flick over images of Pell. They took aruna together in the Forale House, where Pell had suffered alone the day before his inception. They writhed together on the inception slab of the Nayati, surrounded by feathery shadows. In this place Thiede had put his mark on Pell for ever, and by default on Cal as well. They lay side by side next to the shore of a soda lake with crystals forming in their hair, watching the stars wheel across the sky. And Cal spoke of Pell, he spoke of the journey they had shared, the hara they had met. With eyes closed, Flick lay at Cal’s side, walking in his mind through the shadowy canopies of the Kakkahaar, the cracked ruins of the Irraka town, the dark splendour of the Varr enclave. He heard the names, like those of mythical heroes: Lianvis, Spinel, Terzian, and he imagined the smoky mystery of the alluring seducers that had crossed Cal’s path: Ulaume of the Kakkahaar, Cobweb of the Varrs. Flick loved to hear these stories, but part of him wondered how much of what he was told was true. To Cal, it was perhaps an exorcism, as the touch of Flick’s body was an exorcism of Pell – or so Flick told himself.

  One time, Flick said, ‘What do you want from this?’

  And Cal replied, ‘Everything I’m getting.’

  Flick wasn’t quite sure what that was, but despite his earlier resolution, he was playing Cal’s game, so much so he found himself saying, ‘Where else, Cal? Where else do you want to go around here?’

  They were lying in the fodder loft above the stables, where once Cal had surprised Pell while he’d been working. He and Flick had rolled in the lingering atoms of earlier love. ‘I don’t know,’ Cal replied. ‘Where else is there?’

  Flick pondered. Between them, they’d drunk a lot of wine and it was almost dawn. ‘There’s only one other place I can think of,’ he said. ‘Orien’s house.’

  ‘We were never together there.’

  ‘I know, but it was where Orien trained Pell in the arts of aruna magic.’

  Cal laughed. ‘You know what that means?’

  Flick didn’t like the tone of the laugh. ‘No. What?’

  ‘I have to have Orien there, not you.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Maybe I was waiting for a sign. Maybe you’re an oracle. Maybe it won’t be there.’

  It was too late to take the words back. It was as if the whole time, from when Cal had first arrived, Flick had been manoeuvred into this moment, to say those words. They could never be taken back.

  Five days later, Orien came to Seel’s house for dinner. The air was electric that night, and metal all over the house seemed to shine with a weird light. Flick felt jumpy and hot. Cal slunk round him in the kitchen as he prepared the meal, and Flick’s body ached for him. He could imagine a red mist descending before his eyes, so that he’d sweep all the vegetables and pans off the kitchen table and throw Cal onto it, ravish him there. And no doubt Orien and Seel would come in and – no, the image was just comical after that.

  Cal picked up the cook’s knife and ran its point down Flick’s spine. ‘Like that?’ he said.

  ‘Too much,’ Flick replied. ‘Make yourself useful. Cut something up.’

  ‘OK. What?’

  ‘The meat.’

  Cal threw himself down into a chair and began chopping up the steak, his hair hanging over his eyes. You are a monster, Flick thought, devastating and terrible. You are also a drug and extremely addictive.

  Flick could tell from the beginning of the meal that Cal was planning something. He had come to recognise a certain calculating air about Cal and that it signalled trouble. Orien was like a trusting doe, tied to a stake as bait for the predator. Cal stalked him, circled him, then attacked. Flick had never witnessed such precise and surgical verbal assault before. It was the same as before: the accusations, the suspicions, but with a new and bitter malice. Cal sounded drunk, but Flick knew he wasn’t. Cal raved about Pell, about Thiede, about how it wasn’t over. It really wasn’t and he wouldn’t rest until those who were responsible had paid the price. Was this the preamble to a seduction? If so, it didn’t sound like it.

  ‘Cal, stop it!’ Seel yelled. ‘You’ve been over this a thousand times. It does no good.’

  Cal appeared to have worked himself into a frenzy. Flick just wished he would stop. It was an act, a play, but what final scene was in store?

  Orien had had enough. ‘You’re insane,’ he said coldly. ‘Look at you. You’re a
n insult to our kind. You’re selfish, vain, arrogant and sick.’

  Cal laughed hysterically. ‘Then I’m a mirror,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sure you’d like to be. The fact is, you’re so busy looking at yourself in it, you can’t see anything else.’

  Cal leapt from his seat and before Seel or Flick could act, hauled Orien up and threw him against the wall. ‘You killed him!’ he screamed. ‘You!’

  Orien looked frightened. In the moments before Seel and Flick managed to pull Cal off, Flick saw that terrible fear and realised then he’d been playing with fire. He thought he could control it, but he couldn’t. He’d just made it burn hotter. Cal had deceived him. He was so much more than he appeared to be, and so much worse.

  Orien made a hasty exit and Cal slumped back in the chair that Seel had pushed him into. ‘You’ve gone too far,’ Seel said. ‘Too far, Cal. I won’t have this. If you can’t get a grip, then you have to leave. I won’t let you abuse my friends in my house.’

  Flick had never thought he’d hear those words. He wondered just how jealous Seel was and how much he had guessed.

  Cal put his head in his hands. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’

  Seel folded his arms. ‘Go to bed,’ he said. ‘Sleep on it, and tomorrow we talk about your future.’ He glanced at Flick. ‘I want you to come with me tonight.’

  For once, Flick was glad responsibility for the rest of the night had been taken from him. He knew that if Seel hadn’t said that, he and Cal would have ended up together, and everything felt too sour and stagnant for him to face that. He felt physically sick.

  In Seel’s room, Flick said, ‘That wasn’t meant to happen tonight. I’m sure it wasn’t. Something went wrong.’

  Seel pulled off his clothes. ‘What went wrong happened a long time ago,’ he said. ‘Don’t make the mistake of thinking you understand him, Flick. You don’t. You’re just under his spell.’

  Seel had clearly come round to sharing the thoughts of hara like Colt. When Cal had decided to glamorise Flick, so it seemed the scales had fallen from Seel’s eyes. Perhaps Cal was too weak to glamorise more than one har at a time.

  Seel made no move of affection towards Flick, who was both grateful and disappointed. He had changed. Surely Seel could see that? They lay side by side, not touching, listening to the creaking timbers of the house. Cal would leave soon, Flick was sure of it. It was something he both craved and dreaded.

  In the weird hours of the night before dawn, Flick woke up. Seel was snoring gently beside him, looking vulnerable and achingly beautiful in sleep, all the lines of anxiety smoothed away from his brow. Something had roused Flick. He had been dreaming, and the dream had made his head throb, it was so chaotic and intense. He couldn’t remember it now. He got out of bed and pulled on his trousers. Outside the bedroom door, the house was bathed in a strange blue twilight. He could hear it breathing. Cal’s door was open and Flick knew, deep in his gut, that Cal wasn’t in the room. Had he gone to Orien’s house? Surely not.

  Flick padded down the stairs. The eerie light blurred his vision. He couldn’t see properly and sometimes the steps beneath his feet felt wet. The house seemed odd, as if the atmosphere had been stirred by an invisible yet burning presence. Flick went into the kitchen and walked around it, touching the worn implements he used every day. There was a finality to everything. It was like saying goodbye. The wooden block that held his knives lay on its side on the counter next to the range. Flick righted it and noticed the biggest knife was missing. His flesh froze, slowly, from his heart to the surface of his skin. He ran out into the night.

  The streets of Saltrock seemed to have become wider, the buildings along them taller. Everything appeared skewed and out of proportion. Flick didn’t know this place. It scared him. He ran round in tight circles, afraid of whatever might lurk behind him. He needed to put his back against something solid and crouch there until dawn.

  The Nayati loomed black and sinister against the stars, a haunted place. A ghost was coming out of it, a ghost haloed in light. Flick stumbled to a halt on the dusty road. He felt dizzy and the buildings swayed around him. ‘Cal!’ he said. He wanted to shout, but it came out as a whisper. He couldn’t shout, mustn’t. Had Cal been to the Nayati to pray? Like Flick, he was naked from the waist up. But for his bright hair, he looked like he’d been tarred.

  Flick walked towards him slowly. Cal had come to a halt and was staring ahead of him, his gaze unfocussed. His face was a warrior’s face, smeared with fierce gouts of darkness. Light was starting to fill the sky, an unhealthy light. Perhaps it wasn’t the dawn at all, but the end of the world.

  Flick reached out and touched Cal’s chest. The skin was icy cold, and stickily wet.

  ‘What have you done?’ Flick said.

  Cal did not look at him. ‘Go home,’ he said. ‘You’re dreaming. Go home.’

  ‘Cal…’

  ‘I’m not here. I never was.’

  Cal brushed past him and began to walk towards Seel’s house. Flick went after him, grabbed his shoulder. ‘You’re drenched in blood,’ he said. ‘What happened?’

  Cal glanced at him then. ‘He came back, that’s all. You want to see? Go look. I’ve left an offering in the temple.’

  He took Flick’s hand and pressed something into it. ‘Here. This is yours.’ It was the kitchen knife. Flick dropped it at once. It lay shining in the dirt, brilliantly silver and brilliantly red. Impossible in this light, yet there it was. When Flick managed to tear his gaze away from it, he was alone.

  His mind was in turmoil. Part of him was already running back to Seel, waking him, dragging him from his bed to discover whatever terrible thing awaited them in the Nayati. But his body wouldn’t comply with this image. It just stood there, paralysed. Even when Flick heard the galloping hooves leave the town, he could not move.

  When the roosters began to crow, he picked up the knife and went back to the house. He washed the blade in the gushing water at the sink, retching, swallowing bile. He dried the knife carefully and replaced it in the block. With a wet cloth, he wiped away a bloody hand-print from the back door. He ignored the rest. Then he went up the stairs, not looking down at what he might be treading in. He crawled into Seel’s bed. And slept.

  Seel woke him late. Presumably, Seel had slept deep and long too. ‘Flick, get up, there’s a problem,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ For a moment Flick couldn’t remember what had happened during the night. He thought he’d had a bad dream of some kind.

  ‘Cal’s room. It looks like an abattoir and he’s not in it.’

  Flick could feel the colour drain from his face, which Seel would think was only natural under the circumstances.

  ‘We’d better organise a search,’ Seel said. ‘It’s possible… it’s possible he might have cut his wrists or something, although that’s not what I’d have ever expected of him.’ Seel’s expression was remarkably calm, but he kept swallowing hard. His olive skin looked sallow and damp.

  Flick got out of bed.

  ‘There’s blood in the corridor, on the stairs, everywhere,’ Seel said. ‘You run over to Colt’s and Orien’s.’ He shook his head. ‘Fuck, what the hell has he done?’

  Flick couldn’t speak. When Seel left the room, he went to the bathroom and washed his feet, without looking at the colour of the water that spiralled down the plug hole. Then, he returned to the bedroom and stripped down the bed. He didn’t look at the sheets, at the marks that might stain them where his feet had lain. He dressed himself with care and brushed out his hair, then plaited it slowly. Seel’s head reappeared round the bedroom door. ‘Get a move on! Flick! Snap out of it! We have to deal with this.’

  Flick nodded and followed Seel to the stairs. He faltered at the top, seeing the glutinous trail of red that led to the bottom.

  ‘Don’t look at it,’ Seel said. ‘Just go and fetch Colt, Stringer and Orien. I’ll see to this later. Just go! I’ll start searching.’

  Like an a
utomaton, Flick walked to Colt and Stringer’s house. They were already up, and Stringer was working on some arcane-looking piece of machinery in the yard. ‘Can you come…?’ Flick said.

  Stringer looked up. His face was smeared with grease. ‘Sure. What’s up?’

  Flick saw the sun go red. Everything was red.

  ‘Flick?’

  He felt hands upon him and he was sprawled on the ground, looking up at the sky. The sun burned into his eyes. He felt so cold.

  ‘What the hell’s happened?’ Stringer demanded.

  Flick clawed himself into a sitting position, hanging onto Stringer’s shirt. ‘Something terrible,’ Flick said. ‘Sorry. Sorry… Just come, that’s all.’

  ‘Come where?’

  ‘Seel’s…’

  Colt had come out of the house.

  ‘We have to go to Seel’s,’ Stringer said. ‘Something’s happened. Something bad.’

  ‘So much blood,’ Flick said. ‘Seel needs you.’

  Colt and Stringer stared at him for a moment, then Colt growled, ‘that shit!’ and ran off.

  Stringer lingered. ‘Go,’ Flick said. ‘I have to… I have to tell…’ He waved a hand in Stringer’s direction.

  Alone, Flick sat in the yard, picking at weeds between his raised knees. He couldn’t face going to Orien’s, he just couldn’t, and yet he’d seen nothing with his own eyes. Cal could have slaughtered a horse and put it in the Nayati. ‘Slaughtered a horse in his bedroom,’ Flick said aloud to himself. ‘Yeah, that’s so possible. Idiot!’

  He got to his feet. If he could only throw up, he might feel better, but the insides of his body felt like dust. Slowly, he walked towards the Nayati. Surely, somehar must have looked in there by now? And so they had. It must have been simple for Seel to follow the trail of blood.

  Flick saw a crowd had gathered at the Nayati door. Colt stood at the threshold with his arms outspread, preventing hara from going inside. Numbly, Flick pushed his way through the crowd, and they parted to let him pass, because they thought he was close to Seel. At the door, a grey-faced Colt said, ‘You don’t want to go in there, Flick. Take my advice. Don’t.’