Moths to a Flame

by Sarah Ash

  ‘And you think it’s plague?’

  ‘You’re the doctor – you tell us.’

  Azhrel began to climb the rickety stairs; as he neared the top, a sickeningly familiar smell surrounded him. He drew a balsam-impregnated handkerchief from his sleeve and clapped it over nose and mouth.

  ‘Right at the top – it’s not locked!’

  Azhrel pushed the door open.

  A boy’s body lay in a desolate room, jagged broken panes, a buzz of blowflies over the filthy bed. Swollen tracks under the greying skin, broken pustules of corruption, jagged fleshholes as though the swarming flies had not just laid eggs in the putrefying flesh … But something else had already eaten its way through …

  All that long, gilded day, Laili had waited for Melmeth, starting at the slightest sound, not daring to eat or drink the food that was brought for fear they had been tampered with.

  At first she thought the faint fluttering inside her to be no more than the rumblings of her empty stomach … Then as they grew more insistent, she laid her hand tentatively on her belly – and felt something stir beneath her fingers.

  At what age did a babe quicken in the womb? Was that what she could feel, lithe and vital, kicking inside her? Her child? Melmeth’s child?

  She longed to take his hand and place it over the taut skin and see as he felt his child move the same, amazed glow warm his eyes she had glimpsed that morning.

  The heat of the day grew stifling and she drew the shutters across, their carved slats casting an intricate trellis of shadows and sun on her floor. She began to feel weak for lack of food. She loved the warmth of the sun balming her bare skin, her closed lids … If she lay still, she could let her mind drift back to the sun-drowsed sands of Ael Lahi, the cool shadows of the Grove …

  A hand touched her shoulder.

  Laili sat up, blinking dazedly, to see Melmeth standing over her. The room was dim with twilit shadows.

  ‘Come with me.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Just come, Laili. Please.’

  Sleepily she reached for her silken overgown, felt with her toes for her slippers.

  ‘Hurry.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  He took her hand and hurried her out into the antechamber.

  ‘You have heard me speak of Khaldar, my bodyslave, my musician?’

  Laili had heard of dark-eyed Khaldar, the eunuch boy with the golden voice. She had also heard Sarilla’s sly insinuations.

  Sometimes he tires of female company …

  The apartment doors were open; taking up a lantern, he led her across the threshold and out into the darkened palace.

  ‘There is something wrong with his eyes. If anyone comes near with a light, he screams with pain. I’ve sent for Dr Azhrel.’

  Melmeth stopped before a little door of silvered grey wood.

  ‘Then why me?’

  ‘Because you’re the only one in Perysse who knows anything about moonmoths.’

  He lifted the latch and slowly let the door swing inwards.

  ‘Look,’ he whispered, his fingers tightening around hers.

  A youth lay motionless on the bed. The window was wide open and a flock of the moonmoths fluttered about the room, crawling all over the boy, a heaving coverlet of white down.

  ‘Khal?’ Melmeth said softly, stroking the boy’s cheek.

  Khal’s lids flickered open, his lips moved.

  ‘My lord is … too good to me …’ he murmured.

  ‘Look, Laili,’ Melmeth said tremulously, ‘they have calmed him. Perhaps it is true, what they are saying, that the dust heals …?’

  Laili moved closer to Khal. The creatures were slowly crawling off him, their wings ragged, all glitter dulled. She brushed some away and they dropped sluggishly to the floor, unable to fly. Her fingers were smeared with dust from their decaying, disintegrating wings. Khal groaned, muttered incoherently.

  ‘Can you bring the lantern closer?’

  ‘He cannot bear the light, I told you—’

  ‘Melmeth!’ There was something in the urgency of her voice that made him comply. As he held the flame over the boy’s slim body, she could see clearly what she had glimpsed in the gloom. Puncture marks. Bruised puncture marks, freshly dark-stained with blood, marring the perfection of Khal’s dark skin, on chest, smooth belly and groin – as if he had been stung by a swarm of envenomed bees.

  ‘Sweet Mithiel.’ The light flickered as the lantern rattled in Melmeth’s shaking hand and he caught hold of her, pulling her back. ‘I should never have brought you here. I didn’t realise—’

  A discreet tap at the door interrupted him. Laili looked up to see a tall man, sombrely dressed in grey physician’s robes, in the doorway. For a moment she noticed only the terrible scars pitting his face. And then, hoping he had not seen her staring, she realised he was not the old man she had anticipated; with his broad shoulders and glossy dark hair, she judged him to be close in age to Melmeth.

  ‘Arlan,’ Melmeth said. ‘What’s happening? Look at him. Those marks. What do they mean?’

  Azhrel lifted the boy’s slender wrist, searching for a pulse.

  ‘He’s still breathing. But the pulse is sluggish.’

  ‘He was covered in moonmoths, they were swarming over his body. I’ve never seen the like before. Have they drained his blood, are they leechmoths, are they—’

  ‘No.’ Azhrel picked up one of the dying moths with a pair of tweezers and, screwing up one eye, examined it through his eyeglass. ‘Not leeches …’

  ‘Then is it a kind of pestilence?’

  Azhrel popped the moth into a glass phial and stoppered the lid.

  ‘You attended Sarilla. She could not bear the light near her – did she show any sign of these marks?’

  Azhrel bent over Khaldar and with gentle fingers, tried to raise the boy’s eyelid. Khaldar screamed.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Azhrel murmured, shaking his head. ‘Swollen lids, dilated pupils … Has he been taking the dust? Ingesting it?’

  ‘Maybe a little,’ Melmeth said vaguely. ‘He said it gave his voice extra resonance, his songs extra poignancy.’

  ‘Maybe it started with a little.’ Azhrel turned the boy’s wrist over, pointing out a tracery of incisions, barely noticeable in the dim light. ‘And then he found he needed more – and more – to feed the habit.’

  ‘But what does this prove?’ Melmeth said with a little laugh. ‘There must be hundreds within Myn-Dhiel who have been taking the stuff.’

  ‘Maybe it proves nothing,’ Azhrel said, frowning. ‘I’ll give him a sedative; tincture of black poppy.’

  Laili watched the physician measure out a few drops of dark liquid onto a glass medicine pipe and drip them between the boy’s parched lips.

  ‘Is there anywhere we can talk undisturbed?’

  Melmeth drew aside a tapestry curtain and ushered Laili and Dr Azhrel into the painted chamber beyond. Laili saw the boy’s aludh lying where he had left it on the table, one of the strings snapped, awaiting repair.

  ‘This is the Lady Laili, Arlan.’

  The courtesy title took her by surprise.

  ‘She – like these moonmoths – comes from Ael Lahi.’

  Laili found herself looking into Azhrel’s eyes; shrewd, honey-dark and surprisingly warm, they made her forget the harshness of his scarred face.

  ‘You’re very like your brother.’

  He was smiling at her.

  ‘You’ve met Lai!’

  ‘He’s been assisting me.’

  ‘Lai? Still here in Perysse?’ The news confused her; she was sure he had returned to Ael Lahi. What had made him stay?

  ‘Let me get out my journal. You won’t mind if I jot down a few facts? Now tell me – do moonmoths usually behave in this way? Do they sting? Or draw blood?’

  She shook her head. ‘I have never seen anything like this before.’

  ‘What do they feed on?’

  ‘I don’t know. The Elder
s teach the secrets to the newest adepts at the moon ceremony – I and my brother would have been initiated into these secrets had – had—’ She faltered, glancing at Melmeth.

  ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘Had the slavers not destroyed the Grove with fire and captured us.’

  ‘So those who understood the nature of these creatures were killed in this raid?’

  ‘Yes,’ Laili said unhappily.

  In the adjoining bedchamber Khaldar stirred, moaning under his breath.

  ‘If you want my honest opinion, lord,’ Azhrel said, ‘I would ban the use of boskh.’

  ‘But only last week you were telling me that it’s caused miraculous cures!’

  ‘I was wrong to leap to conclusions. I don’t know enough about it. I need to find out more.’

  ‘Ban it! How can I ban it?’

  ‘Send out your tarkhastars to confiscate all supplies and impose severe fines on anyone who does not comply.’

  ‘That could be difficult to enforce.’ Laili saw that Melmeth’s fingers had begun to twitch. She wondered if he was aware he was doing it.

  ‘I do advise it. It seems a highly volatile substance. Khaldar is not the only case I have seen in the city.’

  ‘How can you be sure there is a link?’

  ‘I can’t be sure. But if many more are reported, we’ll have an epidemic on our hands—’

  Khaldar began to call in a faint, dry voice, ‘Water … water …’

  ‘Someone must stay at his bedside,’ Azhrel said. ‘I’ll leave instructions and physic.’

  Melmeth’s hand strayed out, began to finger the snapped aludh string, winding it one way, then the other.

  ‘That golden voice. That glorious, golden voice,’ he said after a while. He passed a hand over his eyes.

  ‘I’ll stay with Khal,’ she said.

  ‘You?’ He looked at her, blinking away tears. ‘No, no. I can’t risk it, chaeryn. I shouldn’t have brought you here tonight. We know far too little about this affliction … and I can’t put you – and our child – at risk.’

  ‘I don’t understand—’

  ‘I’m going to make arrangements. Trust me, Laili.’

  ‘You’re sending me away?’

  ‘A plague-infested city is not the place for a pregnant woman.’

  ‘I want to stay with you. Please don’t send me away.’

  ‘And I want you to be safe. When did you say the babe is due?’

  ‘Leaf-fall.’

  ‘Listen.’ He took her hand, stroking it with his fingers. ‘Clodolë left Myn-Dhiel today. I have divorced her. She has gone to Shandaira.’

  ‘She’s gone?’ Everything was moving so fast – too fast for her to assimilate.

  ‘And the only thing that prevents our union is Ophar’s insistence that you convert to the way of Mithiel. Now—’ He stopped her cry of protest with one finger, gently placed on her lips. ‘This is something which will require delicate negotiation. But believe me, Laili, I’m not going to let him come between us.’

  She leaned across and kissed him gently. This much she understood. He wanted her. He wanted her enough to have divorced Clodolë. She could only begin to imagine what that decision must have cost him, what risks he had taken to make this commitment to her.

  CHAPTER 16

  The tarkhastars of the Arkhan’s guard threw open the doors of the audience chamber. Lai looked questioningly at his escort.

  ‘You’re to go in.’

  The audience chamber at Myn-Dhiel was deserted; Lai walked slowly forwards over the marbled tiles, gazing up at the carven columns, jewelled snakes twisting and writhing through the trunks of trees whose gilded branches upheld the painted ceiling.

  The porphyry throne was empty.

  Painted birds and apes peeped through the branches, bright-eyed and predatory. Lai sensed he was not alone. Gauzes billowed at an open window.

  ‘Out here.’

  Melmeth stood on the balcony high above the gardens; from this height the formal knots and groves became intricate patterns on an unfolding carpet of basil and cedar green.

  ‘I hear you have been making plans to leave Ar-Khendye.’

  ‘I won my freedom,’ Lai said defensively. ‘There was nothing to keep me here in Perysse.’

  ‘Not even your vow of fealty to me?’ Melmeth said softly. ‘Or was that broken the night you entered Clodolë’s bedchamber?’

  Lai felt the blood rushing to his cheeks. He bowed his head.

  ‘I wronged you, lord. I – I am sorry for it.’

  ‘You committed an offence against my honour. Against the honour of the House of Memizhon.’

  Lai stared at Melmeth. The greenjade eyes looked back, betraying no hint of emotion. It occurred to him that at one snap of Melmeth’s fingers, he could be hurled from the balcony to die on the stone terrace far below.

  ‘But I haven’t summoned you here to punish you for her indiscretions. No, this concerns you – and your sister.’

  ‘Laili?’ Lai’s head was reeling.

  ‘A strange sickness has broken out here at Myn-Dhiel. And because your sister is very dear to me I am concerned for her health. I think you know why. So I have been making plans to send her from Perysse. Will you go with her and protect her until it is safe for her to return to court?’

  ‘Where are you sending her?’

  ‘I have written the instructions in this letter.’ Melmeth handed Lai a folded paper, his fingers closing around Lai’s for a moment as though sealing a bond. ‘Even here we may be overheard,’ he said quietly. ‘There are orders here for Ymarys to accompany you.’

  ‘Ymarys! But I have not seen him for days—’

  ‘My sources inform me that you will most likely find him at the Pleasure House of Ysmodai. That’s where he goes when the melancholy fit is upon him.’

  Perysse at sunset. One bright star hung low in the twilit sky, a teardrop of crystal. Duskstar.

  Lai stopped outside a mansion set apart from the others; a hideous gilded daemon’s head leered down at him from the doorway.

  Could this be the place? The Pleasure House of Ysmodai, Melmeth had said. Knock three times on the door, the letter instructed, then wait.

  The door opened a crack; eyes stared at him from the smoky gloom.

  ‘I am looking for Ymarys,’ Lai said. ‘Is he here?’

  ‘Zhan Ymarys?’ The soft voice betrayed the speaker: a eunuch. ‘Please follow me.’

  The walls were hung with silks, hot, lascivious colours: burnt ochre, sensuous pomegranate red, lascivious purple, dark as the split flesh of ripe figs.

  Smokescent wafted around Lai in the dim, hyacinthine light, lilac and spikenard mixed. Dancers wreathed in and out of the lilac shadows moving slowly, seductively to the beat of a velvet-skinned drum. There were boys in the shadows, beautiful almond-eyed boys watching the customers through the smoke. Lai could detect another scent, more subtle yet strong in spite of the masking incense fumes. His eyes pricked.

  ‘Boskh?’ A boy smiled at him with dark-rouged lips, offering an open enamelled box filled with dust.

  Boskh. Lai shook his head and turned away although he felt a sudden, desperate craving at the sight of the sparkling powder; the air seemed thick with the opulent perfume of the drug.

  He scanned the smoke-clouded room, wondering where Ymarys was amidst the crowd of painted, masked exquisites.

  The drum beat more slowly, more seductively as a single dancer wound sinuously in and out of the onlookers, scattering trails of filmy gauze, a moth emerging from its cocoon. His eyes, darker than moonlit pools, seemed mazed with drugs.

  It seemed that he had arrived as some arcane erotic masque was being enacted. Was this what he would have been made to do if they had sold him to the brothel? To be made to dance, drugged, naked, before rich Mhaell customers until the highest bidder took him? Lai watched, fascinated yet repelled, as the strong, slender body beneath the scattering gauzes was slowly revealed, the dark skin painted with trails and w
horls of sparkling silver, the dancer’s pubic hair dyed to match his waist-length serpentine locks in wild streaks of moonwhite. Weirdflutes skirled and as the drumbeats quickened, a beating of wings disturbed the air.

  Moonmoths came spiralling lazily down from a high, open casement as the dancer came to rest, a sacrifice sprawled in sensual abandon, head thrown back, star-streaked hair spread about him like flung streamers. Moonmoths settled on his body, his hair, clustering over the silently heaving ribs. A murmur of amazement rippled around the watchers.

  And suddenly Lai realised that he was witness to some obscene parody of the moon rituals of the Sacred Grove, designed to stimulate the jaded palates of the Mhaell audience.

  He turned away, disgusted.

  What could possibly amuse Ymarys in this tasteless pantomime? And where was Ymarys?

  He began to move through the slowly swaying revellers. The smell, the taste of the boskh was maddening him, his mouth watered at the memory, his stomach contracted in a pang of longing.

  Damn Ymarys! Where was he?

  Grotesquely painted faces leered at him through the boskh clouds; someone stroked his hair, his cheek … A hand slid up the inside of his thigh …

  He twisted aside with a curse.

  Get out. Must get out of here.

  He stumbled away from the dancers … And then, only then, did he catch sight in the smoky shadowlight, of a shimmer of pale hair. Ymarys sat slumped in an alcove, a stained dreamweed pipe on the table in front of him and an empty alquer bottle.

  ‘Ymarys. I’ve been searching everywhere for you!’

  Ymarys slowly lifted his head; his hair, usually fresh-washed and scented, fell in lank, greasy strands about his shoulders.

  ‘Lai?’ he said muzzily.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  The silver eyes gazed, glazed and dull, into nothing.

  ‘She’s dead.’

  ‘Dead? Who’s dead?’

  ‘Sarilla.’

  A cry arose from the revellers; glancing back, Lai saw that two of the watchers had joined the dancer and were licking the boskh from his belly and breast, urged on by the other watchers and the orgiastic drumbeats.