At this moment, something occurred to me, and I spoke from instinct. ‘You are dead to mortal life, Arianne. There is no need to remain in this terrible moment. You are free to be what you choose. I have seen you standing in this room. Get out of the bath. Nothing’s holding you there.’
For some seconds, everything stilled, even the clocks, as if holding their breath. I experienced a brief stab of pain behind my eyes, and my sight was occluded for a couple of seconds. Then it cleared, and I saw there was no one lying in the bath. Had I released the poor creature before I’d interrogated her? I hadn’t thought she’d just disappear like that. Then I became conscious of being watched and got to my feet, turned round.
She stood at the window, illumined by starlight; not a ghost, but a woman at the end of human days, dressed in dark shirt and trousers, heavy boots, her long hair pinned up on her head, somewhat unsuccessfully. I glanced back at the bath; it was empty and clean. When I turned once more to her, she was gazing out of the window at the forest below.
‘How beautiful the land is at night,’ she said, one hand pressed against the glass.
‘Do you remember all that happened?’
She laughed bitterly. ‘My curse not to forget.’
‘Will you tell me about it?’
She stared at me. ‘This is strange. I feel alive, a person, but I’m not, am I?’
I didn’t feel as if I were conversing with a spirit, but a real living woman. The clocks were ticking again, perhaps holding her together, anchoring her here. ‘To be honest with you, Arianne, I can’t answer that. I wouldn’t say you’re a ghost as such, in the traditional sense, because usually they can’t communicate so freely. They’re generally just memories we can see. I think this room allows you to talk with me, the part of you that still lives, perhaps the greatest part of all, which we’re not meant to know about in our mortal lives. But that’s not what I want to ask you about.’
She smiled sadly, gazed at me, a woman conscious of her own beauty yet not vain about it. A natural. This disturbed me, because I didn’t recognise traits of Wyvachi within her, but bizarrely of Whitemane. Even by starlight, I could tell she was darker skinned than the Wyvachi.
‘You’re one of them, aren’t you?’ she said, matter-of-factly.
I knew what she meant. ‘Wraeththu? Yes. But not one of the kind you ever saw. A hundred years or more have passed.’
‘I can see that you’re different, very different.’ She sat down on the tiles and patted those in front of her. ‘Come here, by me.’
I sat down in front of her, gazed into her dark eyes. Still that look of the Whitemanes about her, their rich, sensual beauty. Was she an ancestor of theirs?
‘My name,’ she said, ‘is Arianne Wyvern, widow of Tobias Wyvern. I came to their house from across the river, because there is a bridge between our families.’
‘You were once of the Whitemanes?’ I asked, somewhat breathlessly.
‘That wasn’t our family name.’ She frowned. ‘I find it hard to remember, because everything across the bridge is hazy.’ She rubbed her face. ‘Let me think... My name... yes, it was once Arianne Mantel.’
‘What happened to the Wyverns when the Wraeththu came?’
Arianne shook her head. ‘Terrible things. My sons were taken, my husband killed, many others also. My daughters...’ She pressed her hands to her eyes. ‘It was yesterday, yet a hundred years ago, and it feels to me like both.’
‘We have all the time we need,’ I said. ‘I want to know... all of it.’
What she told I later wrote down, sitting up for the remainder of the night, because I knew if I delayed the account through sleep I would forget details. She talked for perhaps two hours, but in that time, concisely, told me the history. Now it is a chronicle, in print.
The matriarch of the Wyvern family in the early days of Wraeththu aggression was Vivyen Wyvern. She had been a great socialite in her youth and was known as Vivi to friends and family. Her husband had died when fairly young, through one of the diseases that ravaged humanity at that time. She had three sons: Vere, Tobias and Erling. Tobias, the middle son took a wife – controversially – from ‘across the river’ from another land-owning family, the Mantels, who were regarded locally as eccentric and wild. They were not local people but had come from somewhere else. Arianne Wyvern, nee Mantel, had six children with Tobias, four boys and two girls; this was a boon in days when human fertility was waning. For this reason, Arianne was much loved and revered by the Wyverns, and regarded in some way as sacred. It was commonly assumed that Arianne’s husband would take over the family once Vivi passed on, as the eldest son, Vere, was sickly. As well as physical illness he was mentally delicate, and for years had had to be kept confined to the house because of his occasional ravings and other eccentric behaviour.
As human society continued to break down and the first horrifying rumours of the Wraeththu began to circulate, many human communities reverted to a kind of feudalism, since the remaining (very few) old landed families were often prepared to take local people into their estates and fortify them against threats. Generally, this threat was all too human; looters were common. Both the Wyvern and Mantel estates became fortified in this way, although there was much commerce between them. Differences were put aside in the face of common peril. They made a vow to defend each other’s families, and the people dependent upon them, from the specific threat of Wraeththu.
Family members from far-flung corners made their way to these estates, seeking shelter and safety. Many had lost their homes. Vere, like some demented prophet, told anyone who would listen that Wraeththu would soon over-run the entire world and that all was lost for humanity. Vivi refused to countenance this outrageous idea, believing Vere’s pronouncements to be no more than fanatical drivel. She strengthened her land’s fortifications. The Wyvern wall could be seen from far away. Beacon towers were built on both sides of the river so that the Mantels and Wyverns could warn each other of attacks and if necessary send aid. They had many fit and able fighters between them, prepared to fight to the death for their land and homes.
For years, no Wraeththu presence came close to their isolated corner of Alba Sulh, and some among the families dared to think the plague had passed them by. They believed they were safe within their walls and alliances. What they had not accounted for was the Call.
One midsummer, it came. The air became very still, all animals and birds were silenced. Sentries on the estate walls were alert for enemies creeping towards them. Great torches had been lit so that none could hide in the immediate countryside. But no enemies revealed themselves. Vivi herself patrolled the wall, her hunting hounds beside her, but no one saw a thing. They just felt it. From the house came the eerie chanting of Vere Wyvern, uttering prophecies of doom. Vivi is reputed to have said to her estate steward, ‘Either you silence that boy in a civilised way or I will do so permanently.’ (Vere was at this time over forty years old.)
Vere was silenced, not by violence but by a drug that Arianne gave to him. The night passed without apparent incident, but in the morning the beds of Arianne and Tobias’s sons were empty. Kinnard, Medoc, Gwyven and Peredur: gone. No one had heard or seen anything. At first, there was an intensive search, people believing the boys were hiding because they’d been afraid, but they were not to be found. A rider came from across the river to say that several of the Mantel boys had also disappeared, among them Bryce, Thorne Mantel’s eldest son.
‘They will be found,’ Vivi declared furiously. ‘If we have to scour every inch of this county, they will be found.’
Arianne, silently, left the family gathering and went to Vere’s room. She woke him and asked, ‘Were my sons taken, Vere?’
He replied. ‘I don’t wish to wake from the next sleep you give me, and pray you may gift your sons with a similar release.’
This was all she needed to know.
Arianne returned to the family and delivered the news. Predictably, Vivi would not believe it. The boys could n
ot be snatched from a secure stronghold in plain sight. There was no way enemies could cross the wall unseen.
‘Then search for tunnels,’ Arianne said dully, but she sensed they had come by no means known to humankind.
Vivi ordered a search of the estate at once, as did the Mantel patriarch, but no trace of tunnels was found.
The Mantels were indeed eccentric and wild, and also different to the Wyverns in other ways. They were not ‘old blood’ in a nobility sense, and had come into money some time earlier, which had enabled them to purchase their estate. They came from what Vivi regarded as ‘disreputable stock’, and because of this they did have means at their disposal to conduct a different kind of search to anything the Wyverns could attempt. Their wily scouts, underworld bred, reported that a large gathering of Wraeththu was camped twenty miles or so beyond the borders of Wyvern and Mantel land. It was clear they had been collecting recruits. The Wraeththu were regarded as a sinister cult into which impressionable young boys were brainwashed. Other rumours about certain ‘changes’ being made to converts Vivi dismissed as superstitious nonsense. Both she and Thorne Mantel were determined to retrieve their boys. They would launch a rescue mission when the Wraeththu next went hunting.
Careful surveillance by the Mantels’ subtle trackers revealed when the camp was most vulnerable. The Wraeththu did not go out daily to kidnap people, but appeared to venture forth less regularly on small raiding parties, during which only a few would be captured. The Wraeththu would then spend a couple of weeks enacting peculiar ceremonies with the captives, which were presumed to be the technique through which these unfortunates were indoctrinated.
When the news came that the camp was emptier than usual, Vivi and Thorne knew they would have to respond quickly. Vivi herself led her people north. Mindful of her own estate being left vulnerable, everyone who could hold a weapon was stationed upon the walls or ordered to patrol the perimeters, whatever age they were.
The desperate savagery of the Mantel/Wyvern attack was mostly successful and they managed to liberate around twenty boys they found in a bad state, apparently infected with some kind of wasting disease. Many of the Wraeththu left behind in the camp were slaughtered, as they’d been taken by surprise. (This was presumably because they were a fairly neophyte group, lacking the powerful leaders who would have sensed impending danger.) During the attack, one of Vivi’s own grandsons – Peredur, almost unrecognisable – joined the defence put up by the Wraeththu. He had clearly already been converted. Vivi shot him in the shoulder and had him taken away from the scene of battle at once, believing that whatever had been done to him could be reversed.
Unfortunately, Peredur was the only boy of the Mantel and Wyvern families who was found. The others, it was assumed, had gone out raiding with the Wraeththu or were dead, or confined elsewhere.
Just as Vivi had known she’d have to act swiftly, once the Wraeththu were fully aware of the attack they reacted equally swiftly, fighting with a ferocity and speed the humans had never seen before. Reinforcements slunk in from the fields and forests, perhaps part of that particular tribe or called from other groups by unknown means. Their unearthly cries instilled terror, and caused many of the Mantel and Wyvern party to panic and run, or simply drop in their tracks to be butchered. Eventually, realising they had got the best they could hope for from the raid, Vivi and Thorne ordered a quick retreat, streaking back across fields and through forests to their strongholds. They had made rescues, but only one of their own kin.
Arianne attended to her injured son, along with two members of the family staff, while Vivi helped with the other boys they’d brought back. She’d found they were terribly sick with an unknown disease that was ravaging their bodies and had in fact appeared to have eaten them partially away. Due to these deformities, it was not immediately apparent what had happened to them, but to Arianne, caring for Peredur, it was obvious. He barely even looked the same, more like a beautiful wild animal in the form of a young person – she could no longer call him a young man. She felt she had been bleached out of him, for his once golden skin was now white, as was his hair. He was like no earthly creature. The only way he could be approached was when drugged, and Arianne kept him in a virtual coma, concealing what she had learned from other family members and pressing her staff to secrecy. But after a few days, one of the women told Vivi what she’d witnessed, and Vivi went herself to see what had happened. Peredur’s gunshot wound had healed already, but stranger than this were the physical changes to his body. He was no longer completely male but some kind of ‘intersex freak’, as his grandmother referred to his condition. Vivi ordered him to be confined in a room in the attics, and that for now nothing should be further revealed to anyone else. Family members and household staff must be kept away.
The other boys who had been rescued died in excruciating agony, their bodies malformed, their flesh rotting upon their bones. Unknown to their human liberators, these were half-completed inceptions and without Wraeththu hara to tend them through the change, they had no hope of survival.
The Wraeththu retaliation, when it came, was devastating. Only Vivi’s strength of spirit kept the Wyverns fighting. Fairly soon all contact with the Mantels was lost. Nightly, waves of attacks would come, with weird screams through the night that sent guards running from their posts. Many threw themselves over the walls, their hands clasped to their heads, to be slaughtered by those waiting below. Vivi sought out those who were deaf, either from birth or through old age and infirmity. These she sent to guard the walls and in some measure this was successful, since the battle cries did not affect them. But there were not enough of them to patrol the entire estate. Experiments with blocking the ears of guards were sometimes effective, while in some cases seemed to make no difference.
Refugees flooded to the Wyvern Estate, and despite dwindling supplies, Vivi ordered that all should be allowed within, after a body search to make sure no Wraeththu attempted infiltration. To Vivi, this was a means to get more troops rather than an act of charity. More boys began disappearing without a trace, and Vivi decreed that any who remained should be drugged and incarcerated to save them from whatever hideous fate awaited them at Wraeththu hands.
One night, a couple of months after Vivi and Thorne’s attack on the Wraeththu, the beacon fire of the Mantels was lit, and at first the Wyverns believed their neighbours had survived, as they had, and that this was a signal. But it quickly became evident this was not the case. A swarm of Wraeththu attacked the wall. They made sure to light the Wyvern beacon, which Vivi believed would summon even more of them. As her people fought for their lives against quicksilver attackers who were ferocious beyond measure, she ordered that the fire should be extinguished as a matter of priority. This action probably saved the survivors.
Wyvern defenders recognised Wraeththu who had once been their kin and friends, now not even seeming to know who they were. Entreaties were met with savagery. Relatives were cut down without compassion, even the girl children. Boys were spared and taken. But Vivi would not accept defeat, rallying her ragtag army. Through some miracle, as the sun was rising, they drove the attackers back. But so much had been lost, and the soft daylight revealed the extent of the carnage and structural damage. It was obvious to all that another attack could not be survived.
Enraged and grief-stricken, after witnessing so many of her family slain, Vivi lost much of her reason. She believed that Peredur had called the Wraeththu down upon them. She ordered him to be brought out into the stableyard before the people, along with all the other incarcerated boys. She had Peredur stripped naked and tied to a stake. Then she fetched from the kitchen one of her grandmother’s silver desert spoons and a meat knife. Arianne was locked in the attic, whether to protect her from seeing what would happen or to prevent her interfering, Vivi did not say.
She mutilated Peredur herself, in front of everyone. She took out his eyes, hacked off his genitals. To her, he was no longer her grandson, but a disgusting interloper in his body.
She regarded Peredur as dead, and what lived on was an abomination. Let his fate be a lesson to all. Any boy who turned traitor in the coming days would be similarly punished.
After this torture, Peredur was left in the stableyard of Meadow Mynd, as an example. Arianne was forbidden to tend to him, or go anywhere near him, although she was released from imprisonment. Vivi needed her to care for Vere, who would tolerate no one else near him. Often, he just lay on his bed, screaming, as if all that Peredur had gone through had happened to him instead. He bled from the eyes. He pissed blood incontinently.
Witnessing all this, sitting beside Vere’s bed, weeping out her heart, helped Arianne make her decision. The only regret she had was that she could not reach the yard where Peredur still hung, nearly dead, but because he was Wraeththu unable to die quickly. Her husband and daughters had been slaughtered, the fate of three of her sons was unknown. The last one, Peredur, was dying slowly, in terrible pain and fear.
Two nights after Peredur’s mutilation, Arianne administered a fatal drug to Vere, as he had asked her. She sat with him until he died. Then she fled to Dŵr Alarch, and there took her own life, unable to bear any more of the horror, or to witness the inevitable, unspeakable end to it all. But then there was no escape and she was held, as if in some endless nightmare, alive only to her memories.
Until I came to her. Until then.
This was all that Arianne knew. Once she’d finished speaking, I took her in my arms; she felt like a woman of flesh and blood.
‘I can’t go yet,’ she said, her face pressed against my chest.
‘But you are released,’ I said.
‘No. I don’t know what happened afterwards. That must be what holds me here. Something else. The horror didn’t end with my death.’ She pulled away from me, wiped her face. ‘You will help me, Ysobi.’ This was a simply stated fact. She and I both knew I would.