Moths to a Flame

by Sarah Ash

  ‘No weapons?’

  ‘We are opposed to violence – of any kind. I keep an armoire in which new members of the community place all such relics of their life outside the house. A locked armoire. I’ll take you there, if you wish.’

  The tall armoire was of dark-stained, knotted wood; it smelt of beeswax and dust. Lai hung his razhir on a hook inside and placed his riding clothes and golden victor’s sash beneath.

  A symbolic gesture. But as Pherindyn locked the door, Lai felt as if he had shrugged off an intolerably heavy burden. He had taken the first step on the long path back to the Grove.

  Please help me.

  The faint, failing voice still resonated through Ymarys’s brain. The night was silent but for the wheezing of the creaking sign.

  ‘I’ve cracked. Finally gone crazy. I’m hearing voices.’

  In here … Up the stairs …

  Each word etched itself upon his mind, the filigree scratchings of a silver nib. He looked up again at the shuttered building. The mask of the lesser daemon of Ar-Zhoth leered down at him: lascivious Ysmodai, Ysmodai the Trickster.

  What’s happening to me? Where is everyone? Can’t anyone hear me?

  Curiosity overmastered Ymarys. He slipped down the noisome side-alley, searching for another way in. Perhaps a back door might have been left unlocked, unbarred … Or a side window … He had to know if the mind-voice were real – or imagined. He had to find out.

  On the first floor, a leather-paned window had been left slightly ajar; if he could clamber his way up, using the gutter as a toe-hold …

  His foot dislodged a tile which fell to smash on the courtyard beneath. He froze, suspended in mid-air, waiting for the sudden clamour of voices, the cries of discovery.

  No voices disturbed the dreary silence of curfew. No one appeared. Ymarys’s straining arms began to protest; he swung himself lightly up, nudged open the window and squeezed inside, brushing cobwebs from his clothes. Damn! He had snagged a thread of his sleeve.

  ‘Anyone there?’

  Upstairs … I’m upstairs …

  There was no doubting the clarity of the voice now.

  Ymarys blinked in the shuttered gloom of the landing, then edged his way along until he almost fell up the open stairwell. Warily he climbed the precariously winding stair, back to the wall, one step at a time.

  Open the door …

  The door swung inwards … The attic room was dim, clouded with nightshadows.

  Someone … or something … lay in the corner, shrouded in pale gauze, cocooned in cobwebs, white strands straying onto the dusty floor.

  A faint, sweet scent … drifting moonpetals … tainted the air.

  Here.

  The voice rang clear in Ymarys’s mind as the note of a glass bell. Yet the only sound in the bare attic was the gasp of his own ragged breathing.

  ‘Who – who are you?’

  My name was … was Jhofiel …

  ‘Jhofiel?’

  Smoke-grey eyes, meeting his through the lilac haze of dreamweed, enticing, daring …

  How could this shrouded skeletal bundle of arms and legs be Jhofiel the dancer? Jhofiel who, skilled in the erotic arts, had made him forget for a night or two the emptiness in his heart left by dead Sarilla, unattainable Lai.

  Ymarys took a tentative step towards the prone figure.

  Don’t … come too close …

  ‘Why have they left you here alone?’

  They were afraid …

  ‘Your hair,’ Ymarys whispered, bending down to sift his fingers through the soft, pale strands. They felt as frail as spidersilk, slightly sticky to the touch. ‘But Jhofiel’s hair was dark.’

  Why are you not afraid … like the others?

  ‘But what has happened to you?’

  They call it the Changing …

  ‘Is it a sickness? Are you ill?’

  They say it is caused by the boskh …

  ‘How long have you lain here?’

  Two, three, four days … I’ve lost count …

  ‘Since the Zhudiciar’s edicts were posted?’

  Maybe …

  ‘When did you last eat?’

  Can’t eat … can’t speak … aloud … Jhofiel tried to prop himself up on one emaciated elbow, his huge dark eyes staring suspiciously into Ymarys’s. How come you can hear me? No one else could understand me … since the Changing …

  Ymarys gave a light, insouciant shrug. ‘I’m damned if I understand it myself—’

  A muffled shout outside on the quay.

  They’ve come for me. You’re an informer! You’re—

  ‘Ssh.’ Ymarys edged across to the dormer window and peered down to the cobbles far below, hoping his moving shadow could not be glimpsed from the quay.

  Torchlight lit the sluggish river water with splashes of gleaming gold. A patrol was coming along the quay. Ymarys counted six tarkhastars in all. They were methodically checking each boarded door, each shuttered window, rattling the locks and bolts to ensure they had not been tampered with.

  Three dizzy storeys beneath, he saw them approach the door of the empty pleasure house, heard them pound on the door with mailed fists.

  He held his breath as the empty building echoed with each blow …

  The patrol moved on to the next house.

  ‘Now do you trust me?’ Ymarys whispered to Jhofiel. He began to move silently towards the door. This was the moment to slip away, when the patrol was just out of sight.

  Where … are you going?

  ‘You’re too weak to move, I have to bring you food, water.’

  Why? Why are you doing this for me?

  Why?

  Ymarys forced himself to look at the Changed features, the thin-sculpted face, white marble mask, out of which stared the slanting dark eyes, no longer weird but weirdly beautiful … Jhofiel’s sensuality had not been lost in the Changing but heightened, translated into this pale, slender nightwraith.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ymarys said.

  Fogs had rolled in off the sea, encasing the house in a chill, damp cloud. Lai doggedly worked on in the Hearkenor’s garden, trying to dissipate his growing anxiety in hard physical labour.

  ‘Lai.’ Pherindyn appeared in the archway of the walled garden, beckoning Lai to him.

  Lai went carefully: fallen leaves had made the paths slippery.

  ‘You have news?’ Lai said, his voice raw with the morning’s cold.

  ‘Only rumours – and disquieting rumours at that. I thought I should tell you first – and then you could decide on a suitable moment to tell your sister.’

  ‘What rumours?’ Lai stopped.

  ‘There appears to have been some kind of insurrection. A minor one, swiftly put down.’

  Insurrection. Riot. A sudden fear for Ymarys seared through Lai’s mind.

  ‘You don’t think that the Arkhan—’

  ‘Has been overthrown? It’s unlikely. But maybe he has decided to stay in Perysse until the situation has stabilised. Maybe it’s nothing to be concerned about.’

  And there was no news yet from Ymarys.

  ‘Maybe,’ Lai said sombrely. He took out his pruning knife and began to trim the climbing fig on the southern wall.

  CHAPTER 19

  The High Priest paused on the rickety tower stair to catch his breath.

  ‘Right on up to the attic, your reverence,’ called the cook from the bottom of the stairwell.

  ‘It would help if you could show me where you found this – this creature.’

  ‘I’m not going up there again for a thousand eniths. Scared the life out of me. I’ve never seen the like—’

  Ophar reached the attic and sniffed, wrinkling his nose in disgust. That sherbet-sweet smell again: boskh – unmistakably boskh.

  The door at the end had been left ajar. He pushed it with his staff and ventured in.

  In the far shadows lay what seemed at first to him to be nothing more than a crumpled bundle of cob webbed rags.

  He m
oved closer, impelled to see what he must see, no matter how horrible.

  ‘Blessed Mithiel, what abomination is this?’ he muttered.

  A frail figure lay there, clothed only in long drifts of floating hair, white as spun sugar. Was she sleeping? Or in some kind of drugged trance? And what was she? Closer still … Now he could see that the long fingers of the slender hands were webbed, the tracery of veins in the transparent skin as delicate as a skeletal leaf, hoar-dusted by winter frosts. Soft curves of a translucent body beneath, breasts whose delicate nipples were round and pink as little shells—

  ‘Stay a moment,’ he murmured, drawing back. The boskh must have infected his brain, stimulating unnatural lusts with its insidious musksweet fragrance. He was sweating. What had possessed him?

  Was this the result of the Aelahim woman’s sorceries? Was this what became of those who took the dust? The smell of boskh was everywhere, clinging to the gossamer threads of hair of the thing that had once been human – and now was something else, some succuba summoned from the daemon hordes of Ar-Zhoth, to provoke and enflame obscene desires—

  Feelings, long suppressed by years of continence and self-denial, re-awakened, all the more potent for being so long denied.

  She stirred.

  Could she sense his thoughts, could she feel the heat of his desires?

  A rage, mingled of disgust and desire, consumed him. Destroy. Destroy the vile creature so that it should not inspire such carnal lusts in others—

  He had no doubt now as to what he must do. As High Priest he must protect the faithful from the influence of such lascivious monstrosities.

  ‘Why was I not told of this before?’

  ‘We had no idea it was hiding up there.’ The cook shuddered.

  ‘And no one’s been up there in weeks?’

  ‘Only Dr Azhrel.’

  ‘Azhrel!’ Ophar echoed, grimly triumphant. ‘Oh, I have you now, doctor. I have you.’

  A single moonshaft lit Sarilla’s tower, the high open casement with its cracked panes. And from the open casement a single thread of ethereal music issued, liquid as moonkissed waters.

  Azhrel stopped, mesmerised, and looked up.

  At the window of Miu’s moonlit garret stood a frail figure, a white wraith, tall and slender.

  ‘What … is that?’ Azhrel murmured.

  Clothed only in its long drifts of floating hair, white as spun sugar, the figure lifted one skeletal hand towards him.

  With a sudden shock of recognition, Azhrel felt himself lifting his hand in salutation, moving slowly, involuntarily across the cobbles—

  ‘Why, Miu – you’re awake!‘

  The distant silverthread of melody floated towards him, borne on the nightbreeze, faint as a half-remembered dreamvoice from the far side of sleep.

  She was awake. And she was singing.

  The nagging ache in his temples and behind his eyes slowly eased. He forgot how tired he was. Tranced by the wreathing melody, he felt the looming towers of Myn-Dhiel melt away and he stood on moonbleached sands, lulled by the whisper of tidefall …

  The sound of chanting shattered the trance. A splash of fire lit the archway.

  Torches.

  A group of hooded hierophants came towards Azhrel across the palace courtyard, mumbling chants and burning bitter herbs in their clanking thuribles.

  The night grew bright with their spluttering torches, the air harsh with their monotonous chanting.

  ‘You’re out late, Doctor Azhrel.’

  The last of the hodded torch-bearers stopped in front of the physician, throwing back his hood to reveal his lean face.

  Ophar.

  ‘So many patients to attend to,’ Azhrel said pointedly.

  ‘I am told there’s one of them sequestered hereabouts—’ and Ophar glanced up at Sarilla’s tower,’—and the edict demands that they must be destroyed.’

  A terrible apprehension gripped Azhrel.

  ‘Who – or what – must be destroyed?’

  ‘Oh come now, Doctor. Are you telling me you haven’t come across one of these poor wretches?’

  Miu. Someone had discovered her.

  ‘Fire.’ Ophar smiled. ‘They cannot resist it. Moths are drawn to the flames—’

  ‘You’ll excuse me but I have patients waiting—’

  Ophar grabbed him by the arm, fingers digging into his flesh.

  ‘Watch.’

  They had gathered at the foot of the tower in a ring of torchflames.

  ‘Is that one of your patients, Dr Azhrel? Hm?’

  Azhrel saw Miu’s pale figure at the window, more moth than human. All the while the chanting was growing louder, dinning into his ears with its merciless, mindless monotony.

  ‘Miu!’ Azhrel cried.

  For a moment, she seemed to hang, to float in the very air above the flaming torches. Azhrel could not avert his eyes, hoping for a moment against all hope—

  Then the fires caught light. Gossamer whiteness crackled, burned as the creature came thudding to the ground and the hierophants closed in, hacking, stamping, crushing—

  Azhrel tried to push his way through to her but the hierophants caught hold of him, held him back.

  ‘It is counted a heinous crime to harbour one of these daemon-spawn, Azhrel.’ Ophar’s breath stank of smoke and stale incense.

  ‘If you arrest me, who will care for the plague victims?’

  ‘You are not indispensable. There are plenty of other physicians.’

  ‘But none with my specialised knowledge—’

  ‘It is your “specialised knowledge” that gives us grave concerns. We shall be watching you, doctor. Oh yes, we’ll be watching. You may not always know we are there … but meddle once more in temple matters – and we shall crush you as we crushed that cursed mothspawn. No one – not even the Arkhan – will be able to save you.’

  The hierophants flung Azhrel down by the charred remains. She was nothing now but a smouldering, blackened shell, her gossamer hair burnt to a handful of cinders.

  ‘Miu,’ Azhrel repeated brokenly. Now he would never learn her secrets. His sight blurred … but in his distress he could no longer tell whether his eyes were watering with the acrid smoke … or tears.

  Ymarys knelt down and – after a moment’s hesitation – slipped his arm beneath Jhofiel’s shoulders. He was so light it was like lifting a child … But no child had such wildspun glimmering hair, there seemed to be skeins and skeins of it, cascading about his shoulders, his waist …

  ‘Drink,’ Ymarys said. ‘It’s honey and water.’

  Turn away.

  ‘Why?’

  Just turn away.

  The slender tongue uncurled from Jhofiel’s mouth seeking sweetness. Ymarys stared, half-revulsed, half-fascinated, as Jhofiel began to draw up the honey-liquor, sucking as though through a straw. The level in the beaker slowly went down … until none was left.

  I warned you.

  Jhofiel was watching him through his moondark eyes. The feathery fronds of eyebrow-antennae trembled slightly.

  You don’t find me strange? Monstrous? Deformed?

  The direct question confounded Ymarys. He could not begin to define what he felt about Jhofiel, except that it was something quite other than disgust. Jhofiel exuded a subtle, sensuous aura, almost as if his natural sensuality had been enhanced by the Changing.

  Ymarys drew away, his senses swimming, aware of the moondark eyes still watching him. How could he feel so strongly attracted to this weirdling?

  I remember you now.

  Jhofiel’s dark eyes stared at Ymarys in the gloom of the shuttered chamber.

  The Arkhan’s champion. I saw you in the arena once, your body oiled for the fight. Of course I was way up in the cheap seats, not close enough to see your face, only the way you moved, so graceful, so – dangerous …

  Jhofiel glanced slyly at Ymarys, almost provocatively. Before Ymarys could stop him, Jhofiel had reached out to touch his hands with his own; a brief, seductive
gesture that left a tingling trace of desire. ‘Jhofiel—’

  No. It was obscene to even contemplate it. Obscene to imagine such a thing possible. Man and Changed, bodies intertwined, touching, kissing …

  He went towards the door, slamming it behind him, running down the stairs, stumbling in his haste. He was stifling in this shuttered, gloomy house. He had to get away.

  Autumn rain fell on the city. Summer was over. Ymarys lifted his face to the rain, letting it drench him.

  Here on the street, his mind felt cleaner, clearer. He had wasted so much time.

  There were plague warnings, the sightless eye of Ar-Zhoth, black as tar, daubed across doors and shutters in every street he passed through.

  There were edicts pinned to every noticeboard.

  By order of Jhafir, Haute Zhudiciar for the protection of the citizens of Perysse, it is decreed that:

  1) All citizens shall obey the curfew from dusk until dawn. Anyone found abroad during the hours of darkness without a permit will be taken to be a looter or rioter and arrested.

  2) All boskh and moth carcases to be destroyed. Anyone found in possession of the drug will be arrested and his possessions confiscated.

  3) Anyone known to be harbouring the unfortunates known commonly as the Changed is to be immediately reported to the authorities.

  4) Punishment for the crime of looting: loss of right hand.

  Punishment for the crime of rioting: loss of both hands.

  Punishment for the possession of boskh: blinding and castration.

  Punishment for harbouring the Changed: execution.

  There also were posters offering ludicrously generous rewards for anyone coming forwards with information as to the whereabouts of one Ymarys, the Arkhan’s Razhirrakh:

  Tall, slender yet with broad shoulders, the Razhirrakh can be easily identified by the ornate razhir he wears. Physical peculiarities: grey eyes, long straight hair, ash-fair, which he may wear braided after the fashion of the Tarkhas Memizhon.

  He threw back his head and laughed aloud. ‘So I’m a wanted man. How flattering.’

  He tore down one of the posters and, folding it, slipped it inside his jacket as a memento.