Nightshades

by Tanith Lee

  bellows of his lungs. He smiled at Merton, he smiled

  compassionately. He felt himself regarding a man who is unaware that in his flesh the advanced symptoms of an incurable illness have manifested themselves. Should I tell him? No, poor creature, let him be. Let him go on in impossible hope.

  'Do you swim?' Ashburn asked.

  'Swim? Why yes, you know I do, unlike yourself.'

  The poet turned to the brown boy with the same smiling compassion.

  'And you?'

  'I? I swim like dolphin.' He glared at them, however, with the kingly eyes of a shark.

  'What's all this worry about swimming?' Merton said, lighting the pipe. 'Afraid we'll capsize or something?'

  'Look,' Ashburn said, softly.

  Merton looked. He saw a strange, mysterious phenomenon, a bank of nacreous fog, afloat like a great galleon and bearing down on them.

  'Good God.'

  'Yes,' Ashburn said, 'a good God, who sends his people rain.'

  With an abrupt entirety as if a grey glove had seized the ship, the fog closed over them and they lost each other in it.

  'Turn back for shore!' Merton shouted. No one apparently heard him.

  The boat swung drunkenly sideways. The drums of his ears seemed to stretch tight; there was a growling in the air. The sky and sea tilted to meet each other, and slammed together as thunder shattered the ocean into a broken plate. A lightning appeared to strike to the vitals of the boat itself: wood splintered, a terrifying unreasonable sound.

  Merton fell to his knees; he could hear the boy screaming about a rock in the sea.

  'Ashburn, where are you?' he cried, groping with his hands through the greyness, but the wind rushed into his throat, and the world leaned sideways and flung him into its salty mouth, and gulped him down.

  Albertine was still waiting at the telescope. She had watched the ship bob on the leaden sea, she had watched the fog rise like a hand from the floor of the ocean and gather the vessel into itself.

  Soon the sky broke up. Explosions of thunder and dazzling lightnings divided the landscape between them. Viscous rain began to fall, at first like great gems, opals or diamonds, then in a boiling sheet of white fire that flamed across the house, the shore, the sea in impenetrable gusts. From the village the islanders came running, shouting, opening their arms to the storm. Albertine, her hair flattened to her skull and shoulders, the colour of the rain itself, stared through the one-eyed thing towards the abstracted ocean.

  The storm was brief; it failed and fled away shrieking over the land trailing its torn plumes. The sky cleared, the sea, the shore, even the distant coast became visible. Nothing stood between the island and the coast. The ship had vanished.

  The black tongue of the telescope licked to left and right, probing with its cold cyclopean glass, but not for long.

  Soon, Albertine drew away from it. Her clothes and her hair ran water as if she had come from the sea. Yellow water dripped from the slag-bellied awning. As if across miles of desert, she could hear the voice of a frenzied woman in the house below her feet. 'Poor Sibbi,'

  she whispered, as if comforting herself. 'Poor Laura.' She did not cry, only frowned a little, striving to comprehend the perfection of her knowledge, the completeness of the event which had befallen her.

  She rocked her grief in her arms like a sleeping child.

  When she turned down the stairway into the tower room, she saw the poet at his desk, the manuscripts, the open books, set out before him.

  He looked up at her, not with a lover's face or the face even of an enemy, but merely with the soulless look of something which is only spirit. She held her grief in her arms and watched the poet's ghost fade like water in the air of the room, until only the room, the shadows, remained, and the unfinished poem, spread like the white wings of a dead pigeon on the desk.

  Blue Vase of Ghosts

  In my family we tend to be surprise-gift givers, and one afternoon my father gave me a blue glass vase. I have always been enamoured of coloured glass in all forms, but the instant I saw the vase, the title opened in my mind. The story came at once, with all its stained-glass

  colouring.

  1

  Subyrus, the Magician

  Above, the evening sky; dark blue, transparent and raining stars.

  Below, the evening-coloured land, also blue to the depths of its hills, its river-carven valley, blue to its horizon, where a dusting of gold freckles revealed the lights of the city of Vaim.

  Between, a bare hillside with two objects on it: a curious stone pavilion and a frightened man.

  The cause of the man's fear, evidently, was the pavilion, or what it signified. Nevertheless, he had advanced to the open door and was peering inside.

  The entire landscape had assumed the romantic air of faint menace that attends twilight, all outlines darkening and melting in the mysterious smoke of dusk. The pavilion appeared no more sinister than everything else. About eight feet in height with a flat roof set on five walls of rough-hewn slabs, its only truly occult area lay over the square step and through the square doormouth -a matched square of black shadow.

  Until: 'I seek the Magician-Lord Subyrus,' the frightened man exclaimed aloud, and the black shadow vanished in an ominous brazen glare.

  The man gasped. Not so much in fear, as in uneasy recognition of something expected. Nor did he cry out, turn to run or fall on his knees when, in the middle of the glare, there evolved an unnatural figure. It was a great toad, large as a dog and made of brass, which parted its jaws with a creaking of metal hinges, and asked: 'Who seeks Subyrus, Master of the Ten Mechanicae?'

  'My name is not important,' quavered the man. 'My mission is. Lord Subyrus is interested in purchasing rarities of magic. I bring him one.'

  Galaxies glinted and wheeled in bulbous amphibian eyes.

  'Very well,' the toad said. 'My maker hears. You are invited in. Enter.'

  At which the whole floor of the pavilion rushed upwards, with the

  monster squatting impassively atop it. Revealed beneath was a sort of metal cage, big enough to contain a man. Into this cage all visitors must step, and the frightened visitor knew as much. Just as he had known of the hill, the pavilion, the glare of unseen lamps and the horrendous brazen guardian. For down the trade roads and throughout the river ports of Vaim, word of these wonders had spread, along with the news that Subyrus, Master of the Ten Mechanicae, would buy with gold objects of sorcery -providing they were fabulous, bizarre and, preferably, unique.

  The visitor entered the cage, which was the second of the Ten Mechanicae (the toad being the first). The cage instantly plunged into the hollow hill.

  His entrails seemingly left plastered to the pavilion roof by the rapid descent, the visitor clutched to himself the leather satchel he had brought, and thought alternately of riches and death.

  Subyrus sat in a chair of green quartz in a hall hung with drapes the colours of charred roses and black panthers. A clear pink fire burned on the wide hearth that gave off the slight persuasive scent of strawberries. Subyrus studied the fire quietly with deep-lidded dark eyes. He had the face of a beautiful skull, long hands and a long leopardine body to concur with that image. The robe of murky murderous crimson threw into exotic relief his luminous and unblemished pallor, and the strange dull bronze of his long hair that seemed carved rather than combed.

  When the cage dashed down into the hall and bounced on its cushioned buffers, throwing the occupant all awry, Subyrus looked up, unsmiling. He regarded the man who staggered from the cage clutching a satchel with none of the cruel arid expressions or gestures the man had obviously anticipated.

  Subyrus' regard was compounded of pity, a vague inquiry, an intense drugged boredom.

  It was, if anything, worse than sadism and savagery.

  A melodramatic laugh and glimpse of wolf-fangs would have been somehow preferable to those opaque and disenchanted eyes.

  'W
ell?' Subyrus said. Less a question than a plea - Oh, for the love of

  the gods, interest me in something. The plea of a man (if he were that alone) to whom other men were insects, and their deeds pages of a book to be turned and turned in the vain hope of a quickening.

  The man with the satchel quailed.

  'Magician-Lord - I had heard - you wished marvels to be brought to you that you might… acquire them.'

  Subyrus sighed. 'You heard correctly. What then have you brought?'

  'In this satchel, lordly one - something beyond -'

  'Beyond what?' Subyrus' sombre eyes widened, but only with disbelief at the tedium this salesman was causing him. 'Beyond my wildest dreamings, perhaps you meant to say? I have no wild dreamings. I should welcome them.'

  In a panic, the man with the satchel blurted something. The sort of overplay he might have used on an ordinary customer; it had become a habit with him to attempt startlement in order to gain the upper hand. But not here, where he should have left well alone.

  'What did you say?' Subyrus asked.

  'I said -1 said -'

  'Yes?'

  'That the Lady Lunaria of Vaim - was wild dream enough.'

  Now the satchel-man stood transfixed at his own idiocy, his very bones knocking together in wretched fright. Indeed, Subyrus had lost his mask of boredom, but it had been replaced merely by an appalling contempt.

  'Have I become a laughing stock in Vaim?'

  The query was idle, mild. Suddenly the man with the satchel realized the contempt of the magician was self-directed. The man slumped and answered, truthfully: 'No one would dare laugh, Magician-Lord, at anything of yours. The length of the river, men pale at your name.

  But the other thing - you can hardly blame them for envying you the Lady Lunaria.' He glanced up. Had he said the right words, at last?

  The magician did not respond. The frightened satchel-man had space to brood on the story then current in the city, that the Master of the Ten Mechanicae had taken for his mistress the most famous whore this side the northern ocean, and that Lunaria Vaimian ruled Subyrus

  as if he were a toothless lion, ordering him to this and that, demanding costly gifts, setting him errands, and even in the matter of the bedchamber, herself saying when. Some claimed the story an invention of Lunaria's, a dangerous game she played with Subyrus'

  reputation. Others said that Subyrus himself had sent the fancy abroad to see if any dared mock him, so he might cut them down with sorcery in some vicious and perverse fashion.

  But the satchel-man had come over the mountain roads to Vaim. A stranger, he had never seen Lunaria for himself, nor, till tonight, the magician-lord.

  'Well?' Subyrus said drowsily.

  The satchel-man jumped in his skin.

  'I suggest,' Subyrus said, 'you show me this rare treasure beyond wild dreamings. You may mention its origin and how you came by it. You may state its ability, if any, and demonstrate. You may then name your price. But, I beg you, no more sales patter.'

  Shivering, the satchel-man undid the clasps and drew from the leather a padded bag. From the bag he produced a velvet box. In the box he revealed a sapphire glimmer wrapped in feathers. The feathers drifted to the floor as he lifted out a vase of blue crystal, about a foot in length, elongated of neck, with a broad base of oddly alternating swelling and tapering design. The castellated lip was sealed by a stopper that appeared to be a single rose-opal.

  Prudently silent, and holding the vase before him like a talisman, the visitor approached Subyrus' chair.

  'Charming,' said Subyrus. 'But what does it do?'

  'My lord,' the satchel-man whispered, 'my lord - I can simply recount what it is supposed to have done - and to do. I myself have not the skill to test it.'

  'Then you must tell me immediately how you came by it. Look at me,' Subyrus added. His voice was all at once no longer indolent but cool and terrible. Unwilling, but without choice, the satchel-man raised his head. Subyrus was turning a great black ring, round and round, on his finger. At first it was like a black snake darting in and out, then like a black eye, opening and closing.

  Subyrus sighed again, depressed at the ease with which most human

  resistance could be overcome.

  'Speak now.'

  The satchel-man dutifully began.

  Mesmerized by the black ring, he spoke honestly, without either embroidery or omission.

  2

  The Satchel-Man's Tale

  An itinerant scavenger by trade, the satchel-man had happened on a remote town of the far north, and learned of a freakish enterprise taking place in the vicinity. The tomb of an ancient king had been located in the heart of one of the tall iron-blue crags that towered above the town. Scholars of the town, fascinated by the tomb's antiquity, had hired gangs of workmen to break into the inner chamber and prize off the lid of the sarcophagus. At this event, the satchel-man was a lurking bystander. He had made up to several of the scholars in the hope of some arcane jewel dropping into his paws.

  But in the end, all that had been uncovered were dust, stench, decay and some brown grinning bones - clutched in the digits of which was a vase of blue crystal stoppered with rose-opal.

  The find being solitary, the scholars were obliged to offer it to the town's Tyrant. He graciously accepted the vase, attempted to pull out the opal stopper; failed, attempted to smash the vase in order to release the stopper; failed, ordered various pounding devices to crush the vase - which also failed, called for one of the scholars and demanded he investigate the nature of the vase forthwith. This scholar, who had leanings in the sorcerous direction, had also become the host of the parasitic satchel-man. The satchel-man had spun some yarn of ill luck which the scholar, an unworldly intellectual, credited.

  So the satchel-man was informed as to the scholar's magic assaults on the vase. Not that the satchel-man actually attended the rituals first hand (as, but for the mesmerism, he would have assured Subyrus he had). Yet he was advised of them over supper, when the fraught scholar complained of his unsuccess. Then late one night, as the satchel-man sprawled on a couch with his host's brandy pitcher, a fearsome yell echoed through the house. A second or so later, pale as

  steamed fish, the scholar stumbled into the room, and collapsed whimpering on the ground.

  The satchel-man gallantly revived the scholar with some of his own brandy. The scholar spoke.

  'It is a sorcery of the Brink, of the Abyss. More lethal than the sword, and more dreadful. In the hands of a Power, what mischief could it not encompass? What mischief it has encompassed.'

  'Have a little extra brandy,' said the satchel-man, torn between curiosity, avarice and nerves. 'Say more.'

  The scholar drank deep, grew sozzled, and elaborated in such a way that the hairs bristled on the satchel-man's unclean neck.

  Searching an antique book, the scholar had discovered an unusual spell of Opening. This he had performed, and the rose-opal had jumped free of the mouth of the vase. Such a whirling had then occurred inside it that the scholar had become alarmed. The crystal seemed full of milk on the boil and milky lather foamed in the opening of the castellated mouth. In consternation, the scholar had given vent to numerous rhetorical questions, such as: 'What shall I do?' and 'What in the world does this bubbling portend?' Finally he voiced a rhetorical question that utilized the name of the ancient king:

  'What can King So-and-So have performed with such an artifact?'

  Rhetorical questions do not expect answers. But to this question an answer came. No sooner was the king's name uttered than the frothing in the vase erupted outwards. A strand of this froth, proceeding higher than the rest from the vase's mouth, gradually solidified. Within the space of half a minute, there balanced in the atmosphere above the vase, deadly white but perfectly formed, the foot-high figure of a man, lavishly bearded and elaborately clad, a barbaric diadem on his head. With a minute sneer, this figure addressed the scholar.

>   'Normally, further ritual with greater accuracy is required. But since I was the last to enter, and since I have been within a mere four centuries, I respond to my name. Well, what do you wish, O absurd and gigantic fool?'

  A dialogue then ensued which had to do with the scholar's astonishment and disbelief, and the white midget king's utter irritation at, and scorn of, the scholar.

  In the course of this dialogue, however, the nature of the vase was specified.

  A magician had made it, though when and how was unsure. Its purpose was original, providing the correct magic had been activated by rite and incantation. That done, whoever might die -or whoever might be slain - in the close neighbourhood of the vase, their soul would be sucked into the crystal and imprisoned there till the ending of time, or at least of time as mortal men know it. Since its creation, countless magicians, and others who had learned the relevant sorcery, had used the vase in this way, catching inside it the souls, or ghosts, of enemies, lovers and kindred for personal solace or entertainment.

  It might be reckoned (the king casually told the scholar) that seven thousand souls now inhabited the core of the vase. ('How is there room for so many?' the scholar cried. The king laughed. 'I am not bound to answer questions. Therefore, I will do no more than assure you that room there is, and to spare.') It appeared that whoever could name the vase-trapped ghosts by their exact appellations might call them forth. They might then reply to interrogation - but only if the fancy took them to do so.

  The scholar, overwhelmed, dithered. At length the miniature being demanded leave to return into the vase, which the scholar had weakly granted. He had then flown downstairs to seek comfort from the satchel-man.

  The satchel-man was not comforting. He was insistent. The scholar must summon the king's ghost up once again. Positively, the king would be able to tell them where the hoards of his treasure had been buried, for all kings left treasure hoards at death, if not in their tombs, then in some other spot. Was the scholar not a magus? He must recall the ghost and somehow coerce it into malleability, thereby unearthing incredible secrets of lore and (better) cash.