Nightshades

by Tanith Lee

  from the sky.

  The servant ran out on to the terrace and cast himself on his knees.

  'My lady is not yet ready - but she bids you enter.'

  The servant was sallow with fear.

  Subyrus stepped through the terrace doors, and beheld a richly clad man in maddened flight down a stairway.

  Lunaria had kept one of her customers late in order that Subyrus should see him. This was but a variation on a theme she had played before.

  Near the stair foot, about to rush to a new flight - for these stairs passed right the way to the interior side of the secret door -the customer paused, and looked up in a spasm of anguish.

  'You have nothing to dread from me, sir,' Subyrus remarked.

  But the man went on with his escape, gabbling in distress.

  'And I. Am I not to dread you?'

  Subyrus moved about, and there Lunaria Vaimian stood, dressed in a vermilion gown that complemented one aspect of the sunset sky, her blonde hair powdered with crushed gilt.

  She stared at Subyrus boldly. When he did not speak, she nodded contemptuously at the dining room.

  'I am not proud,' she announced. 'I will take my fee at dinner. I am certain you will grant me that interim between my previous visitor and yourself.'

  The red faded on gold salvers and crystal goblets. Lunaria was wealthy, and she had earned every vaimii.

  They did not converse, she and her guest. Behind a screen, musicians performed love songs with wild and savage rhythms. Servitors came and went with skilfully prepared dishes. Lunaria selected morsels from many plates, but ate frugally. Subyrus touched nothing. Indeed, no one alive could remember ever having seen him eat, or raise more than a token cup to his lips. Occasionally, Lunaria talked, as if to a third person. For example: 'How solemn the magician is tonight.

  Though more solemn or less than when he came here before, I cannot

  say.'

  Subyrus never took his eyes from her. He sat motionless, wonderful, awful, and quite frozen, like some exquisite graveyard moth, crucified by a pin.

  'Are you dead?' Lunaria said to him at length. 'Come, do not grieve. I will always be yours, for a price.'

  At that he stirred. He placed a casket on the table between them, murmured something. The casket was gone. The vase of blue crystal glimmered softly in the glow of the young candles.

  Lunaria tapped the screen with a silver wand, and the musicians left off their music. In the quiet, they might be heard scrambling thankfully away into the house.

  Lunaria and the magician were alone together, with sorcery.

  'Well,' said Lunaria, 'there was a tale in the city today. A blue vase in which thousands of souls are trapped. Souls which can inform of fabulous treasures and unholy deeds of the past. Courtesans who will reveal wicked erotica from antique courts. Devotees of decadent sciences. Geniuses who will create new books and new inventions. If they can be correctly persuaded. Providing one can call them by name.'

  'I could teach you the method,' Subyrus said.

  'Teach me.'

  'And so buy a night of your life?' Subyrus smiled. It was a melancholy though torpid smile. 'I mean to have more than that.'

  'A week of nights, for such a gift,' Lunaria said swiftly. Her eyes were wide now. 'You shall have them.'

  'Yes, I shall. And more than those.'

  He had got up from his chair, and now walked round the table. He halted behind Lunaria's chair, and when she would have risen, lightly he rested his long fingers against her throat. She did not try to move again.

  The scents of ambergris and musk flooded from her hair.

  His obsession. The growing and only motive for his existence.

  Obscuring from himself his true desire - the pang of her indifference,

  her challenge - he saw the road before him, the box in which he might lock her up. Physically, he had possessed her frequently. Such possession no longer mattered. Possession of mind, of emotion, of soul had become everything. The joy of actual possession, the intriguing misery of never being able actually to possess her again.

  And his fingers tightened about the contour of her neck.

  She did not struggle.

  'What will you do?' she whispered.

  'Presently remove the stopper of the vase. It is already primed to receive another ghost. Whoever expires now in its close vicinity will be drawn in. Into that microcosm where seven thousand dwell content. The enchanted world. They come forth haughtily and retreat gladly. It must be curious and fine. Perhaps you will be happy there.'

  'I never knew you to lie, previously,' Lunaria said. 'You said the vase was a gift for me.'

  'It is. It will be your new home. Your eternal home, I imagine.'

  She relaxed in his grip and said no more. She remained some while like this, in a sort of limbo, before she was aware that his hands, rather than blotting out her consciousness, had unaccountably slackened.

  Suddenly, to her bewilderment, Subyrus let her go.

  He went away from her, about the table once more, and stopped, confronting the vase from a different vantage. An extraordinary expression had rearranged his face.

  'Am I blind?' he said, so low she hardly made him out.

  Youth, and, of all things, panic, seemed swirling up from the darkened closets behind his eyes. And with those, an intoxication, such as Lunaria had witnessed in him the first night he had seen her, the first night she had refused him.

  She rose and said sternly: 'Will you not finish murdering me, my lord?'

  He glanced at her. She was startled. He viewed her with a novel and courteous indifference. Lunaria shrank. What an ultimate threat had not accomplished, this indifference could.

  'I was mistaken,' he said. 'I have been too long gazing at leaves, and

  missed the tree.'

  'No,' she said. 'Wait,' as he walked towards the terrace doors, where the brazen dragon grew vague and greenish on a damson twilight.

  'Wait? No. There is no more need of waiting.'

  The vase was in his hand. Sapphire flashed, and then went out as the dusk enclosed him.

  The dragon heaved itself, with brass creakings, upright and abruptly aloft. Lunaria, rooted to the ground, watched Subyrus vanish into the sky over Vaim.

  5

  In Solitude

  Somewhere in the hollow hill, a lion roared. It was a beast of jointed electrum, the seventh of the Mechanicae, activated and set loose by Subyrus on his return. Its task: to roam the chasm of the hill, a fierce guardian should any ever come there in the future, which was unlikely. It was unlikely because Subyrus, descending, had closed and sealed off the entrance to the hill by use of the eighth mechanism. The stone pavilion had folded and collapsed in unbroken and impenetrable slabs above the place. The periodic, inexhaustible roar of the lion from below was an added, really unnecessary deterrent.

  And now Subyrus sat in his darkened hall, in his quartz chair. The fire did not burn. One lamp on a bronze tripod lit up the vase of blue crystal on a small table. The stopper lay beside it, and beside that a narrow phial with a fluid in it the colour of clear water.

  Subyrus picked up the phial, uncorked, and leisurely drained it. It had the taste of wine and aloes. It was the most deadly of the six deadly poisons known on earth, but its nickname was Gentleness, for it slew without pain and in gradual, tactful, not unpleasant stages.

  Subyrus rested in the chair, composed, and took the rose-opal stopper in his hand, and fixed his look on the vase.

  He had exhausted the possibilities of the world long since. His intellect and his body, both were sick with the sparse fare they must subsist on. There was no height he might not scale at a step, no ocean

  he might not dredge at a blink. No learning he had not devoured, no game he had not played. Thus, it had needed a Lunaria to hold his horrified tedium in check, something so common and so ugly as a harlot's sneer to keep him vital and alive.

  When the g
ate had opened, he had not seen it. He had nearly bypassed it altogether. He had sought a gift for Lunaria, then he had sought to trap her in the crystal, making her irrevocably his property and denying himself of her for ever. Lunaria - he scarcely recalled her now.

  Concentration on the minor issue had obscured the major. At the last instant, the truth had come to him, barely in time.

  He had exhausted the world. Therefore he must find a second world of which he knew nothing. A world whose magic he had yet to learn, a world alien and unexplored, a world impossible to imagine — the microcosm within the vase.

  Like a warm sleep, Gentleness stole over him. Primed to catch his ghost, the blue vase enigmatically waited. Perhaps nightmare crouched inside, perhaps a paradise. Even as the poison chilled it, Subyrus' blood raced with a heady excitement he had not felt for two decades and more.

  In the shadows, a silver bell-clock struck a single dim note. It was the ninth of the Mechanicae, striking to mark the hour of the Magician-Lord's death.

  And Subyrus sensed the moment of death come on him, as surely as he might gauge the supreme moment of love. He leaned forward to poise the rose-opal stopper above the lip of the vase.

  As the breath of life coursed from him, and the soul with it, unseen, was dashed into the trap of the crystal, the stopper dropped from his fingers to shut the gate behind him.

  Subyrus, to whom existence had become mechanical, the tenth of his own Mechanicae, sat dead in his chair. And in the vase -

  What?

  Lunaria Vaimian had climbed the hill alone.

  Below, at the hill's foot, uneasily, three or four attendants huddled about a gilded palanquin, dishevelled by cool winds and sombre fancies.

  Lunaria wore black, and her bright hair was veiled in black. She regarded the fallen stone of the pavilion. Her eyes were angry.

  'It is foolish for me,' she said, 'to chide you that you used me. Many have done so. Foolish also to desire to curse you, for you are proof against my ill-wishing as finally you were proof against my allure.

  But how I hate you, hate you as I love you, as I hated and I loved you from the beginning, knowing there was but one way by which to retain your interest in me; foreknowing that I should lose you in the end, whatever my tricks, and so I have.'

  Leaves were blowing from woods in the wind, like yellow papers.

  Lunaria watched them settle over the stone.

  'A thousand falsehoods,' she said. 'A thousand pretences. Men I compelled to visit me (how afraid they were of the Magician-Lord), only that you might behold them. Gifts I demanded, poses I upheld.

  To mask my love. To keep your attention. And all, now, for nothing.

  I would have been your slave-ghost gladly. I would have let you slay me and bind me in the vase. I would have -'

  The electrum lion roared somewhere beneath her feet in the hollow hill.

  'There it is,' Lunaria muttered sullenly, 'the voice of my fury and my pain that will hurt me till I die; my despair, but more adequately expressed. I need say nothing while that other says it for me.'

  And she went away down the hill through the blowing leaves and the blowing of her veil, and never spoke again as long as she lived.

  Pinewood

  A poem written in my early twenties gave rise to this short tale.

  Either from past lives or the memory of DNA, we seem to know very well emotions never yet experienced, and, glancing back at your prophecies, you may sometimes award yourself eleven out of ten.

  Clear morning light slanted across her face and woke her. She turned

  on her side and murmured: 'David. David, darling, I think it must be awfully late -'

  Receiving no answer, she opened her eyes. The other side of the bed was empty, and the little clock on his side table showed half past ten.

  Of course, he had woken when the alarm went off, as she never did, and left her to sleep. The clock's little round face, like cracked eggshell, ticked with a menacing reproach. She had always been certain it disliked her, in a humorous rather than a sinister manner, because she never responded to its insistent morning screams, and when David was away on business, forgot to wind it up.

  Beyond the bright window the pines rubbed their black needles against the autumn wind. She shivered as she sat up in the bed. The gothic trees disturbed her, a stupid notion for a woman of thirty-seven she told herself.

  Dear David. She brushed her teeth with swift meticulous strokes. He alone had never minded about her sluggish waking.

  She examined her eyes and her throat in the harsh light, bravely. Not so bad. Not so bad, Pamela, for the elderly lady you are. She smiled as she ran the bath, thinking of her anxious questionings, her painful jokes: 'I'm too old for you, darling, really. People will ask you at parties why you brought your mother -' in reality she was three years David's senior - and the batch of youthful snaps: 'Oh, but I look so young in these -' He was good to her, sensing the nervous, helpless steps she took toward that essentially, prematurely female precipice of age - the little line, the gray hair. He told her all the things she wanted to hear from him, all the good things, and never seemed to find her tiresome. He had always had a perfect patience and kindness toward her. And she had always known that she had been unusually lucky with this man. She might so easily have loved a fool or a boor and found out too late, as had Jane, or her sister Angela, a man with no ability to imagine how things might be for the female principal in his life - a lack of comprehension amounting to xenophobia.

  Sitting in the bath she had a sudden horror that this was the day for Mrs Meadowes, the cleaning lady. A twice-weekly visitation of utter cleanliness and vigor, she nevertheless doted on David, and, naturally, bullied Pamela. Frantically Pamela toweled and scattered talc. She never seemed to know where she was with Mrs Meadowes.

  Her days and times of arrival seemed to be in constant flux. And

  now, come to think of it, Pamela remembered she was to meet David for lunch.

  She grasped the phone and dialed the Meadowes' number. An incoherent child answered, presently to be replaced by a recognized contralto.

  'Oh - Mrs Meadowes, Pamela Taylor here - I'm dreadfully sorry, but I simply couldn't remember - is it today you're coming? Or is it tomorrow or something?'

  There was a pause, then the contralto said carefully: 'Well, dear, I can fit you in tomorrow. If you like.'

  'Oh, good, then it wasn't today. Thank you so much. Sorry to have bothered you. Goodbye.'

  There had been something distinctly strange about the Meadowes phone call, she thought as she ate her grapefruit. Probably something to do with that appalling child. She switched on the radio. She caught a news bulletin, as she always seemed to. Somewhere a plane had crashed, somewhere else an earthquake - she switched off. Angela had frequently told her that she should keep herself abreast of the news, not bury her head in the sand. But she simply could not stand it. Papers depressed her. They came for David, and when he forgot to take them with him to the office as he always seemed to nowadays, she would push them out of sight, bury them behind cushions and under piles of magazines, afraid to glimpse some horror before she could avert her eyes. David teased her a little. 'Where's the ostrich hidden my paper today?'

  As she constructed her peach-bloom cosmetic face before the mirror she thought of Angela, vigorously devouring black gospels of famine, war, and pestilence with her morning coffee. James liked her to know what she was talking about at their dinner parties. He rated a woman's intelligence by her grasp of foreign correspondents and yesterday in parliament. It was in a way rather curious. Angela had met James in the same month Pamela had met David.

  She took the car with her into town, a feat she performed with some dread. David was a superb and relaxed driver, she by contrast sat in rigid anxiety at the wheel. Her fears seemed to attract near disasters.

  Dogs, children, and India rubber balls flew in front of her wheels as if magnetized, men in Citroens honked and swore
, and juggernauts

  herded her off the road. Normally she would take the bus, for David often used the car, but today it lurked in the garage, taunting her, and besides she was pushed for time. She reached the restaurant ten minutes late, and went to meet him in the bar, but he had not yet arrived. Bars were unfortunate for her, and alone she shunned them.

  David said she had a flair for being picked up; men who looked like mafiosi would offer her martinis, and all she seemed able to do in her paralyzed fright was apologize to them. She left the bar and went into the restaurant and ordered a sherry at her table.

  The room felt rather hot and oppressive, and all the other tables were filling up, except her own. She drank her sherry down in wild gulps and the waiter leaned over her.

  'Would madam care to order now?'

  'Oh - no thank you. I'm sorry, you see, I'm waiting for my husband -'

  She trailed off. A knowing and somber look had come over the man's face. Oh, God, I suppose he thinks I'm a whore too.

  She took out a cigarette and smoked it in nervous bursts. She could see another waiter watching her from his post beside a pillar. I shall wait another ten minutes and then I shall go.

  It was fifteen minutes past two when she suddenly remembered. It came over her like a lightning flash, bringing a wave of embarrassment and relief in its wake. Of course, David had told her very last thing last night that the lunch would have to be canceled. A man was coming from Kelly's - or Ryson's -and he would have to take him for a working snack at the pub. She felt an utter fool. Good heavens, was her memory going this early? She almost giggled as she threaded between the tables.

  She shopped in the afternoon, and ate a cream cake with her coffee in a small teashop full of old ladies. She had bought David a novel, one of the few Graham Greenes he hadn't collected over the years. She had seen for some time that he was having trouble with his present reading - the same volume had lain beside the round-faced clock for over a month.