The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure - By Storm Constantine Page 0,76

and would no doubt reappear at sundown. Ulaume’s heart beat fast all day. Wherever he was, he kept glancing out of windows, sure he would see some terrible vision shambling up the hill. The image he’d seen in the Cevarro house would not leave his mind. He felt nauseous, light headed.

As Ulaume predicted, Lileem reappeared when the evening meal was ready. ‘You should come in earlier,’ Ulaume said sharply. ‘It’s time you began to help me more. Look at you. You’re half grown up already.’

Lileem didn’t say anything, but went to wash his filthy hands in the sink. It looked as if he’d been rolling in mud all day.

Ulaume dished out the food and said carelessly. ‘Did you see the girl today, Leelee?’

‘No,’ the harling said, tucking into his food with relish.

‘What have you been doing, then?’

‘I waited for her, but she didn’t come,’ Lileem said. ‘I went to the water mill and saw some silver fish.’

‘That’s in the town,’ Ulaume said. ‘Don’t go down there, it’s not safe.’

‘It is,’ Lileem said.

‘I saw something today,’ Ulaume said. ‘I think there are other things here apart from the girl.’

Lileem said nothing.

Chapter Eleven

For over two weeks, Lileem claimed he no longer saw the girl. Ulaume, unsure of the harling’s truthfulness, stooped to spying on him, to no avail. Perhaps the girl had moved on, spooked by Ulaume catching sight of her. Neither did he see again the creature he’d come across in the Cevarro house. He rarely left the hill and told himself what he’d seen had been part of a vision, nothing more. He tried to create some kind of routine. He would bring Lileem up in this place. The past was done, but always he could feel the unseen tugging at the locks on his senses, trying to find a way in.

One evening, he said to Lileem, ‘Do you think the girl has left this place?’

Lileem paused before answering, enough to alert Ulaume to a forthcoming untruth. ‘She’s not here,’ Lileem said.

Ulaume said nothing more, but he felt angry inside. Lileem was cunning, as only a child could be. Cunning in innocence. The girl was still around and she was positioning herself between Ulaume and Lileem. She was luring the harling away.

Ulaume said nothing more on the subject and did not let his anger show. He remembered how he used to be, how no har ever got something over on him, how he always got revenge.

The following morning at breakfast, he said to Lileem. ‘I have to go back down to the Cevarro house today. I must meditate there. I need to know answers. Do not follow me, and do not stray into the town. I will be gone all day. Will you be all right alone?’

Lileem nodded, without even glancing up.

‘Good,’ said Ulaume.

After they’d eaten, he left Lileem to see to the dishes and left the house. He had no doubt the girl must be watching him, so he went slowly down the hill, heading towards the Cevarro house, although he had no intention of going there. Nothing would entice him back into that afflicted place. Instead, he went into another house and there set about shrouding his thoughts. It was clear to him that whenever Lileem had been with the girl, he’d utilised his psychic abilities to warn himself of Ulaume’s approach. Ulaume intended to put a stop to that. He waited a couple of hours and then let down his hair, so that it fell around him in a cloudy veil. He went out into the sunlight and squeezed himself into the spaces between the air, so that nohar could see him and nohar could feel his presence. Now let us see, he thought.

He heard their laughter before he saw them. There was an outcrop of rock on the side the hill that was part of the garden. Here a landscaped waterfall slipped down a series of carved chutes and bowls shadowed by hardy ferns. Ulaume already knew this was one of Lileem’s favourite places, even though he’d warned the harling that the rocks were dangerous. He crept through the trees and saw them playing together, the girl splashing water over the harling, while Lileem waded noisily through the ponds, shrieking and giggling, soaked to the skin. There was an intimacy between them that made Ulaume furious at once. Lileem had lied to him, after all that Ulaume had done. He could have left the harling to die in the desert, but he had not. He had