The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure - By Storm Constantine Page 0,35

to think of his hell, which he lives in continually. It’s the only comfort.’

Before they went to bed that night, Flick told Seel he wanted to change the bedding. He said he wanted to put the previous night well behind them. Seel accepted this and let Flick get on with it. Flick wanted to burn the sheets he’d removed earlier, even though the marks on them were scant. Perhaps it hadn’t really been necessary to change them, but that was Orien’s blood that would be pressed against his skin as he slept. Even if there were only a faint stain, it would burn him like acid.

The blood could be cleared away, the body burned, but the wounds Orien’s murder left on the Saltrock community would take a long time to heal. Hara found it inconceivable that anyhar could infiltrate their safe haven and commit such an atrocity. Seel organised a lengthy ceremonial funeral for Orien, and his body was burned on a great pyre in the middle of the town. Hara stood around numbly, confused. This was never meant to happen. How would they carry on without Orien, their shaman, their rock? Who was there to replace him? Nohar.

The day after the murder, Seel went to Orien’s forlorn empty home and collected all his cats, but they kept running away from Seel’s house, back to their old home. After a couple of days, two hara moved in to Orien’s place, just to look after the animals.

Flick rode out to the soda lake, taking with him the cook’s knife from the kitchen. He threw it into the corrosive bath of minerals and steam, and said a prayer. He did this alone, although in the shimmer above the waters, he thought he saw shadowy cloaked figures walking towards him, carrying staffs and dressed in long black cloaks. But they never reached him.

Over the following weeks, Seel and Flick moved awkwardly around each other, as if they’d lost their senses. Cal had duped them both, but this shared mistake didn’t bring them closer together. Flick didn’t have the energy to look after the house, and Seel spent nearly every day in his office, where the plans for a greater Saltrock lay spread out on his desk. He sat with his back to the window and his head in his hands, staring at the marks on the papers as if he’d never seen them before.

One morning, Flick went into the room without knocking. Seel looked up blearily.

‘I have to go,’ Flick said.

Seel just stared at him.

‘I’m sorry. It’s the only way. I can’t stay here. There’s a promise I made. I mean to keep it.’

‘Flick, don’t leave me,’ Seel said.

‘I have to,’ Flick said.

‘Where will you go? This is your home. You’re an important part of Saltrock.’

‘It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. I can’t live with myself here. Don’t you understand?’

‘No,’ Seel said. ‘I don’t. It wasn’t your fault, what happened.’

‘I could have prevented it,’ Flick said.

‘You couldn’t. Don’t kid yourself. He used you.’

‘I’m going,’ Flick said. ‘You can’t say anything that will change my mind.’

‘Then he’s won completely,’ Seel said bitterly. ‘This is what he wants – Saltrock to fall apart. Let me guess. He told you that you should leave?’

‘This is my decision,’ Flick said.

‘You mentioned something about a promise,’ Seel recalled, his eyes narrow. ‘What did you mean?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Don’t let him use you still,’ Seel said. ‘Please, Flick, be careful of what you’re doing.’

Flick nodded. There was nothing else to say. He couldn’t thank Seel for all he’d been given. He couldn’t promise to come back one day.

Outside, the afternoon was just beginning, the sun high in the sky. Flick saddled his pony, fixed his supplies and a tent to it. Seel didn’t come out of the house.

Flick mounted the pony and urged it out of Saltrock. There was nohar to say goodbye to. He headed towards the northwest. The sun was leading him down the sky. He was heading towards the past.

Chapter Six

During the day, when the sun was at its most deadly, Ulaume would find somewhere for him and the harling to crouch: beneath an overhang of rock, or amongst the spiky fingers of a spindly bush. He used the piece of fabric the child had been wrapped in as a canopy for them both, and while they waited for the sun’s fierce eye to close, Ulaume would talk constantly to his companion. In the mornings and the evenings, they would travel, but in the cold tomb