The Wraeththu Chronicles by Storm Constantine, Paul Cashman Read Free Book Online Page B

I also knew that it was too late to back out. I would never have been able to find my way home, even if the Wraeththu had allowed it. Perhaps, too, I now knew too much, little as it was, for them to let me go. As Seel opened the door to my fate, the brief intimacy with Cal and the way I had felt about him, had faded. All I knew was that stultifying, indescribable sensation that is the one true fear.
     
    The light inside was dim, but I could make out a bare room, furnished with as little as was practical. A narrow bed stuck out from the far wall. There was a strong smell of creosote
     
    All I wanted to do was curl up on the floor and shut my eyes tight until everything went away.
     
    "Pellaz." Seel's touch on my shoulder brought me around a little. His eyes told me all I needed to know.
     
    Once, he had been in my place. Once even Seel had stood at the threshhold of acceptance, doubting. For the first time, I noticed the faint lines around his eyes and the shadow within them that told of the fighting, the struggle. What were Wraeththu?
     
    "Pell, this is Mur and Garis. They are here to help you through the next few days. They
     
    will attend to you."
     
    Two figures were standing in the doorway to another room. Neither looked at me with sympathy,
     
    only a kind of resigned boredom. They moved, with slouching ennui, to either side of Seel,
     
    sharp and angular strangers, dressed in dull gray. Seel lifted his head, his face shadowed
     
    yet luminous in the yellow light.
     
    "Pellaz Unhar, now is the time of your Inception. It is decreed that you shall be prepared
     
    in your physical, mental and spiritual states for your approaching Harhune. Do you deliver
     
    yourself into our hands for this time, your Forale?"
     
    "Yes." My voice was faint, but what else could I have said.
     
    "Then we may commence." He relaxed and rubbed his face, casting off the incongruous image of high priest. Normally, I would have laughed at it all; arcane words and special effects. At the time, it was deadly serious.
     
    "Garis and Mur will bathe you now," he said. "I can promise you, by the end of all this you will hate the sight of a bath. See you tomorrow."
     
    Without a further glance at me he went out, letting the door swing shut with a horrible finality behind him.
     
    "This way," the one called Garis drawled at me. Gray shirt, gray trousers, iron-gray hair, like the color of a horse, half plaited and held up on his head with loose combs. His feet were bare, the toe-nails more like claws. Mur was similarly attired, only his hair was dyed black, mostly cut short and spiked everywhere except at the nape of his neck, where it was braided to below his shoulder-blades. I followed them into the other room which was lit more brilliantly. Two lamps. It was a bathroom that looked more like a dissecting chamber. Two scrubbed tables, a deep, narrow bath and a sink that looked like steel. All that was missing were the knives and the rubber gloves. Chatting to each other, not even looking at me, Mur and Garis pulled off my clothes. I stood there, shivering and naked, while they busied themselves about the room. Even if they had actually shouted, Pellaz, you are absolutely worthless!," it would not have been more clear.
     
    Thoughts of my old home echoed through my mind. Mima's smile, a dim endless replay; squeaky sounds I could not understand. Somewhere nearby Cal was sitting or standing, talking, drinking. Laughing? Did he think of me? Tears of a child dewed my lashes but did not fall. I let the strangers put me into the bath. Salt water licked at all my old cuts and scratches. Garis wrenched my arms as he scrubbed at me. It felt like they were rubbing slivers of glass into my skin.
     
    At the end of it, I was lifted out, impersonally, and dried off with a coarse towel, red and smarting from head to toe.
     
    "Here, put that on!" Garis threw me a bundle of cloth. As I struggled wretchedly to dress myself, the other two laughed together. I