The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure - By Storm Constantine Page 0,68

can I ignore that heartfelt cry you uttered?’ Flick said. ‘Don’t think of revering me. Let me do the revering. Come here.’

Chapter Ten

All houses have personalities, and the older they are, so the character becomes more entrenched. A house soaks up all that happens within it, and stores events as memories, saying nothing, like a silent paralysed observer, doomed to be buffeted by the emotions of quicker, more ephemeral beings. The spirit of the white house was ponderous, gloomy and given to sighs. To Ulaume, it was like an old despairing man, a spirit that moved slowly from room to room, carrying with it a black cloud of regret that affected the surroundings and turned the wallpaper dank. Patches of mould on the walls looked like sorrowful faces and every floorboard creaked in a complaining voice. A long time ago, Ulaume had lived in a house himself, when he’d been human, right back at the beginning when Wraeththu was hardly more than a germ of an idea in the consciousness of the world. But he didn’t remember much about it. The Colurastes, those who had taken him in, were nomadic, as the Kakkahaar were. Unlike the Kakkahaar, who lived solely under canvas, the Colurastes sought out caves as temporary homes, for they liked dark places from where they could emerge at night. They called themselves the serpent tribe, but really the Kakkahaar were far more serpentine, for they lived in the sun and were burned by it, and their blood ran cold inside.

Like houses, caves had personalities, but tents and canopies did not. They were raised and lowered too many times to find any kind of permanence in the world and their flapping, flimsy fabric was not so disposed to recording events as stone was. So for Ulaume, his new home was unfamiliar in many different ways. He could not say he liked the feelings that crawled just beneath his skin, but they fascinated him. It was as if an unseen story went on all around him, continually. If he remained in one spot for long enough, he would become part of it. There was never a moment he did not feel he was being watched and whenever he entered a room, it felt as if someone had just left it. He sometimes wondered if it was Pellaz he sensed around him, for he was in no doubt that this place was somehow connected with him, and yet Ulaume’s instincts also told him that Pellaz had never lived in the house. The visions and dreams he’d had implied that Pellaz’ family had occupied one of the smaller houses beyond the hill. For some weeks, Ulaume did not venture there, savouring the moment when he would. He knew he had a lot of time, as much of it as he wanted and for this reason he decided to expand outwards into his environment slowly, to soak up as much as he could in minute detail.

Lileem liked the white house a lot, and wherever Ulaume was, he could always hear the thunder of Lileem’s feet as he charged about the rooms, slamming doors in his wake. At least, Ulaume presumed it was always Lileem. The sounds were too alive and energetic to belong to the resident ghosts, who were more the dragging, groaning kind.

For the first few weeks, Ulaume concentrated on claiming a portion of the house for himself and Lileem. He allowed the harling to run wild, do whatever he pleased, and did not expect him to become involved in the homebuilding project. To Ulaume himself it was absurd, an aberration. All his life he had expected his environment to mould itself around him and had never considered putting his own mark upon it. He had enjoyed pinching and hissing at the young Aralid hara who were Lianvis’ staff, employed to create a homely ambience around the tribe leader. Ulaume had never had the slightest interest in what was perceived as comfortable and what was not. But now, in some small way, he did care. He realised he was not so much concerned with making a home, but with trying to reconstruct a picture that might tell him something. He wanted to bring the house back to life, so that its energies would flow down the hill like a breath of spring perfume and resuscitate what lay below. This was the heart of the place.

Lileem spent a lot of time outside, racing around the tattered gardens, where canes rattled in the