The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure - By Storm Constantine Page 0,215

palace. Lanterns cast a pale yellow glow over the water, and the huge orange and black carp that lived within it clustered near the banks hoping for crumbs. In the places where stone steps descended into the lake, the surface was a seethe of slithery fins and scales.

Ulaume suggested some of them go to find drinks, and somehow, without too much obvious effort on Lileem’s part, it ended up that she and Terez were left alone for a while, sitting on opposite sides of the table. When their hands rested on the wood, they were almost touching.

‘This is better,’ Terez said. ‘Hara around here should do this more often.’

Lileem could sense he felt awkward with her, perhaps not sure himself what he was feeling or why. ‘Are you glad you came here, or do you secretly crave your old life of the mysterious, romantic loner?’ she asked.

He studied her for a moment, perhaps wondering whether she was mocking him. ‘It’s not too bad. I can’t think of anything better to do, and to be honest it’s sometimes a relief to have a bed to fall into at the end of the day and know there’ll be good food on the table.’

Lileem wondered how he could say that without remembering his human family, who’d been slaughtered, but she didn’t want to open up a line of conversation in that direction, so did not comment. ‘I’m glad you came,’ she said.

‘I know,’ he said, ‘and that disturbs me.’ He glanced behind him, as if to check the others were not returning, then leaned closer towards her and spoke in a low voice. ‘What is this, Lee? I think of you all the time, and I gather I’m not supposed to.’

She laughed. ‘We are not as dissimilar as you think.’

‘I don’t think anything, because I have no idea what you are. You call yourself ‘she’, but you look like a har to me. You taste like one. And every time you walk past me, and I catch a whiff of your scent, my body goes into shutdown. We shared breath, and under normal circumstances, that’s just the beginning, but I don’t know what to think about you.’

‘It’s complicated,’ she said, ‘but we like each other, don’t we? We can follow our instincts.’

‘Can we? I want to think so, but something bothers me. I don’t know what it is. I get the impression that if anything happened between us, it’d have to be secret and that’s not right.’

‘It’d have to be secret because there are…’ She sighed. ‘Oh, Terez, I’m not sure what I can tell you. We can take aruna together, but there might be unexpected consequences.’

‘Meaning?’

‘I’m a special kind of har, that’s all. Arunic energy can manifest some strange things.’

‘Does this happen with Mima?’

‘No, because she’s the same as me. She had a peculiar experience in Galhea and since we came here, we’ve discovered it’s happened before. We are safe with each other, but we’ve been told there are dangers in being close to normal hara.’

‘What kind of dangers?’

‘Reality can go a bit squishy. Apparently.’

He blinked. ‘What?’

‘It’s nothing I can’t deal with, believe me. If I thought otherwise, I’d never have shared breath with you.’

‘Is this why you call yourself ‘she’? Because you are apart from normal hara?’

‘Oh, shut up,’ Lileem said, grinning. ‘I’ve simply got used to it. It doesn’t mean anything. It just took a while for me to develop ouana characteristics, that’s all. Everything’s fine now.’

Terez didn’t appear to be convinced. ‘I think there’s more,’ he said.

Lileem took his hands in hers and at once a tingling started up in her palms. They were both shooting off energy like the fireworks in the sky. ‘Trust me,’ she said.

He stared at her gravely, raised her hands to his nose, closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, then said, ‘We’ll see.’

The others returned, bearing several large flagons of wine, and the five of them applied themselves to the task of getting drunk. Dancing had started in the courtyard of the palace, but after a few hours, this spilled out into the gardens, until the lake was surrounded by cavorting bodies. Musicians ran among them, playing fiddles, banging drums and tambourines or blowing pipes. The infectious riotous mood was impossible to resist and so it was that Lileem found herself dancing with Terez and they were spiralling away from the lake, towards the shadows of tall trees, where the grass underfoot was wet with dew and smelled like the elixir of life. The