The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure - By Storm Constantine Page 0,188

see him again?’ Lileem said to Mima. ‘Of course, he might already be in Immanion. He said he’d go there. In that case, he’ll be on the same continent as us. So he might be able to…’

Mima had fixed her with a cold stare. ‘Be quiet. That’s quite enough! As far as I’m concerned, I have only one brother, and I even have issues with him. I don’t want to hear another word about anyhar else.’ She was painfully aware how not one of them believed her, and she didn’t truly believe herself either. Unfortunately, there was a lump of pain in the way of rational thought, and Lileem was probably right: Terez could not track them down once an ocean lay between them, unless he’d already crossed it himself.

The worst aspect of such a long journey was the boredom. There were only so many times you could sit playing cards for hours on end, without feeling you’d like to rip every one into little pieces. The tortured writhing of the ship in the late Fall seas did nothing to make the experience more pleasant.

At first, Flick and Lileem had harboured hopes that the Roselane navigators might share some of their occult secrets with them – Lileem especially savoured the thought of being able to conjure up sea spirits – but they were a closed society, and while not rude, made it clear their most useful knowledge was not for the uninitiated. They were, however, more than happy to share their folklore with strangers. Among the Roselane, the King of the Winds is the mighty Chairom, Lord of the North. Beneath his rule are Ishliya, in the East, Tarsis in the West and Kerkutha in the South. Their sons are Nayutha in the southwest, Abathur in the north west, Muzania in the north east and Gauriel in the southeast. Chairom is feared most among harish sailors, because his temperament is unpredictable. Shamans control him through song and also through whistling. When they wish to call upon the winds, they whistle a certain refrain, supposedly pleasurable to the wind concerned. Lileem was keen to learn how to do exactly that, but the shamans only laughed and told her she would have to train in the Roselane city of Shilalama for many years to earn that privilege.

During the journey Zackala remained an enigmatic presence, who spent most of his time with the crew. Both Flick and Ulaume privately wanted to question him and discover whether he was the same har who had once known Cal, but he obviously didn’t want to get to know them.

One night, Tel-an-Kaa gathered everyone together to reveal the devastating information about what Lileem and Mima actually were. Ulaume and Flick had to act surprised, ask the right questions. Mima had already discussed with them how they should react to the Zigane’s news, and it seemed she had prepared them well. Tel-an-Kaa did not appear displeased with their responses.

This kind of behaviour galled Ulaume, who liked to speak bluntly when it suited him. He wasn’t disposed to accommodating others if he didn’t feel like it. His initial opinion of Tel-an-Kaa had changed somewhat. She was a deceiver, and Ulaume knew enough about deception to remain on high alert around the Kamagrian. If she could lie so convincingly, and with more than words, about the simple state of her being, what other political lies could she weave? Ulaume found it difficult to believe the Kamagrian were the retiring, solitude-loving ascetics that Tel-an-Kaa described. She, for example, was far too worldly to fit into that picture. As with Wraeththu, it might be that the majority of parazha were fed a strict diet of things to believe in, while their self-styled leaders did and thought as they pleased. Ulaume was quite interested to find out if his assumption was correct.

Although he didn’t speak of it in detail to Flick, Ulaume found it hard to accept everything Tel-an-Kaa had said to them. Mima was perhaps as cynical, but Lileem appeared to embrace the concept of Kamagrian wholeheartedly. Ulaume couldn’t help wondering if the insistence that Wraeththu and Kamagrian could never come together in aruna was not a simple tactic of division. Mima now felt relaxed enough to describe some of what she’d experienced with Chelone, and even she was not totally convinced by Tel-an-Kaa’s dire warnings. Something unusual had happened, and she felt she hadn’t the experience to deal with it, and aruna with Lileem was far more comfortable, but one day