by Kate Elliott
Until he began at last to feel the drain, just after turning thirty, and had to face the unpleasant truth: virginity is not a circle; in and of itself it produces nothing, but only uses itself up at the last. A source of great power, used wisely, but not infinite.
That was when he came across Professor Farr’s monograph. There were other options open to him, it was true. The prospect of draining the life from thousands of children he found distasteful. The unfettered use of sexuality and arousal to power magic, which he suspected of the Regent, offended his fastidious soul. But Professor Farr’s monograph promised one act, one death, and the power would be sealed within him. Vast power, strong power, a veritable treasure—he had made his plans swiftly and mercilessly. And he had chosen Maretha as the sacrifice.
He frowned now as he halted at the base of the stairs in a small, square room that mirrored the first one. It was decorated with the feast of the bride and groom, and the light in his hand dimmed as he recalled how she had looked at Harvest Fair when he had danced with her—deep-eyed with intelligence and courage and passion, a face strong in line, but weak with a capacity to give and forgive too much—or was that its strength?
He stood almost in blackness, cursed, and erased her image from his mind. As the fire boiled back in his hands, he saw a spear embedded haft down in the middle of the stone floor. When he closed his hand around it and lifted, the wall opened to reveal another staircase, going down. For an instant he thought he saw a woman, black rimming her eyes, broad-skirted, in a yellow jacket that exposed—but it was just a lingering vision and it faded. He hefted the spear in his right hand and descended.
It grew hot as he went down. When he reached the deepest level at last, he had to unbutton his coat. He stood in a small circular chamber with a single door. On that door a picture: through late-summer woods ran a loin-clothed hunter carrying a spear. Dogs ran and nipped at his heels. Just beyond the trees one could see what he pursued, almost—As he walked forward, he walked through the picture and immediately found himself lost in a maze of tunnels.
The fire in his hands was dying, shrinking slowly. It was so hot that he had to remove his coat, then his waistcoat, his boots. He was unbuttoning his shirt when he came into a huge room and saw, by the lantern light coming from the opposite wall, Maretha.
She was taking off her dress. He stared, finding that he could scarcely breathe. The dress slipped to the floor and she stood wearing only the thin material of her shift. He was seized by a compulsion so fierce that he let go of the spear. It clattered to the stone and she turned and saw him. They crossed to each other and she touched him and he was flooded by feelings so intense that he did not even notice that the light in his hands was extinguished.
She was sweet, infinitely sweet; he found her so. His power became lost in her, lost by the very act of finding her, but he did not care: it was clear to him now that love is the infinite source of power, having neither beginning nor end, having no limit. Love begets love, and so creates itself, on and forever. With such loving as this, they could create a child, the only true immortality for humanity, a child, if he had not stripped himself barren in the years before, that they could share and love, and then—
Then she spoke to him. He returned to himself out of this hallucination and realized that his power was trembling as if on the edge of an abyss, and that in one more instant he would lose it forever. He put his hands on her throat and began to strangle her.
For a moment there was no resistance, and he settled into his task with grim determination, in order to finish it quickly.
Then she fought. She fought with a strength that he could feel was augmented. The very stones struggled with her, shook and heaved. His grip slackened, slipped, and she was free, and running.
He had to dress. He even had enough rational thought left to pick up the spear and the lantern before he followed her. That corridor, he thought, but enclosed by stone he searched and searched and at last was hopelessly lost. He felt the weight of earth, of centuries, pressing down around him, stifling the air. The lantern guttered out and he stood in utter blackness. He could not call the least of his fires—his power was gone, as lost as he was. His only hope was to find her and complete the sacrifice that would release the power of the city into the chosen vessel.
Women’s voices whispered down along the walls, seeping through the tunnels from a great distance. He listened carefully, but none were her voice. As he stood he realized that a faint nimbus of light rose like mist off the stone and rolled away down a dank tunnel. He went cautiously, but the luminous mist merely grew brighter and thicker, until it led him into a small circular chamber out of which opened a staircase.
He climbed, accompanied by a swell of mist. The stairs ended abruptly in a door. The mist framed the painting that decorated the door in eerie mystery: it was She, the Daughter, the Temptress, the Evil One, the Princess of Darkness, in her aspect of the Mistress of the Underworld, the Bringer of Nightmares. Blindfolded, dressed in a simple shift, she ran wildly through a forest of horrors—he did not wait to examine the scene in more detail, but started up the last step. The door opened out of its own accord, silent on unseen hinges, light as if it was not stone at all.
He found himself in forest. Utterly still, uncannily still, as if it was not just windless but airless. Behind, the doorway closed with a low grating. He whirled, pushing at the heavy stone, but it was firm under his hand, unmoving, and even as he stood with his palm against the stone, the door dissolved under his fingers into nothing.
He stood alone in the unbroken forest. He looked at his palm, curled the hand into a fist, and walked cautiously forward. He could not even hear his feet on the low grass. The leaves of the trees seemed pinioned there, motionless, heavy with moisture.
It was a thickly-grown forest, so that he could not see much around. The light was not quite day, not quite night, still yet neither dusk nor dawn but some suspension of both.
A sound: the drip of water through leaves to the rich earth. He moved in that direction, listening, alert.
The jingle of a horse’s harness stopped him. He gripped his spear tight, hefting it to throw, and watched. Through a gap in the trees he saw a clearing. Sun shone there, lancing through leaves to cast a brilliant shower of light on the grass. A young woman, scarcely more than a girl, pulled up her horse and dismounted, looking about herself with an expression composed of stubbornness, fear, and excitement all melded into one. Her clothing was of an old-fashioned style, one he did not even remember from his youth. She looked strangely familiar to him, but he could not place her.
She started around, seeing someone—but not him—and in the turn of her head he recognized the face from a portrait: his grandmother, soon after she married. Her defiant expression dissolved into a more vulnerable one, wonder and passion mingled, and she walked as if asleep out of his sight towards some person, and spoke a name.
He ran forward, but when he reached the edge of the clearing, it was empty. Stillness shuttered the forest once again. He went on. The trees shifted in kind, as from a spring forest to a summer one. Tiny flowers bloomed out of the loam. Ferns spread out from dim corners.
A scream. He saw Maretha, a hazy figure running frantically away; perhaps she had seen him. He chased her, stumbled and fell to his knees over a thick tree root, and saw her real pursuers.
Three lions, huge, golden creatures, converged on her. They nipped at her heels until she tripped and went down beneath them. Snarling and a horrible ripping and chewing filled the air. He groped up a tree to his feet and ran forward, shouting. The lions scattered, fleeing, leaving behind them a thing of sinew and bone and mangled flesh.
He took halting steps until he stood beside her remains, but it was not a woman, bloody and torn; a half-eaten deer lay before him. Its black eyes stared sightlessly up at him as he poked at it with the point of his spear. Wings fluttered down beside him, and a kite settled onto the ground a stone’s throw away, waiting for its chance at the kill. H
e shuddered, wiped the spear point on grass, and walked on into silence.
Summer passed to autumn. Leaves littered the ground but not the slightest scuffing or rustling sounded as he passed.
Laughter, wafted on the breeze. Her laughter. He halted, cast for the direction of the sound like a hound casting for scent. Followed it.
Coming out into a glade made picturesque by half-bare trees and a warm, sweet breeze, he saw her, seated on a couch of branches and late flowers. But she was not alone. A man sat with her, hair black as his own was golden, a man with a face as gentle and loving as his own was cold. And they were making love, the two of them, with a tenderness, with delight and pleasure. Her body moved in the sunlight, and the sight of it, the sight of her face made beautiful by joy, burned a heat into him that obliterated what vestiges of his old power still lay hidden in his last secret places. And with that heat, an absolute rage consumed him in fire. Flame pulsed up along his skin as if escaping at last from its confines.
He ran forward and before she or the lover could react he thrust with the spear. Thrust again, stabbed again, and again, heedless of cries or blood or gaping wounds until he was bathed in their blood and they lay scarcely recognizable below him.
He began to shake. Trembled uncontrollably, and dropped the spear. It rustled in leaves and undergrowth—there were no bodies at all, merely a tumble of rotting leaves and old branches.
His breath came ragged and gasping. He backed away from the spot as if from an abomination, grabbed for the spear, and with it in his hand, he ran blindly away through the forest.
Chapter 22:
The Dreamer
HIS HANDS WERE STRONG. As they closed on her throat, she was at first so astonished that it wasn’t until the air was cut off that she started to struggle.
At first it seemed hopeless. His grip was like the grip of iron, and he had pinned her beneath him. His expression was emptied of emotion. It was all the more terrifying for that. Her fists beat feebly at his arms; her legs shifted and kicked uselessly.
Then her anger rose. It all came clear: he had indeed never intended to have an heir. That had been his excuse to allay her distrust so that she would agree to marry him. All along he had intended this, had studied her father’s writings and theories, had believed them, and had chosen this route to augment his power. To gain the power of the labyrinth by her sacrifice.
In that instant, she found her anger. It seemed to her that the stone she lay on rose with her and tore at his grasp, and with the strength of stone she pushed him aside, flung him off her, and ran.
She had no idea where she was going. Her shift tangled in her knees, and she pulled it free and straightened it so that it would not impede her. At first she ran wildly, without any thought but to escape him. Slowly, as she began to think, she realized that she traversed this maze of tunnels without light, without map, and yet she was going somewhere. Some instinct, some knowledge rising out of the stone itself, led her. The labyrinth was of incredible complexity, corridor branching off corridor, but she was mistress of it; she could not lose herself here.
When her steps brought her to a stairwell that disappeared up into rock, she was not surprised or relieved. She paused to catch her breath, caught instead the sound of a voice. The turning in and out of the corridors disguised its distance: it could have been a mile away, or a corner away. With renewed energy, she fled up the stairs. At the top a figure waited, but it was only a painting. She rushed through it out into the night and ran.
Halted, panting, she finally looked about herself. Immediately she wished she had not. She stood in forest illuminated only by moon and stars. At first glance the woods seemed a beautiful cathedral of limb and branch and leaf, arching up into the sky, closed buds and low undergrowth padding the forest floor. But an ominous undertone grew around her, not as a sound, but as a feeling, an instinct of malignance.
She moved forward slowly. Ground cover rustled under her feet like sinister voices. Vines trailing off of low-hanging branches opened needle-point eyes, transforming them into vipers that stared at her, hissing sibilant messages to each other as she passed. Dark things slithered away into the undergrowth. Deformed gnome faces peered around branches, jeering and cluttering. Heavy steps padded along parallel to her, but the creature itself was too far away or too dark in coloring for her to see. Once a low growl rumbled from an unseen throat. An owl too-whit-too-whooed. A smaller voice shrieked in terror, and there was a scuffling, and a snap, like a neck breaking.
“Maretha.”
The voice stopped her stockstill.
“Maretha. Little saint, where are you?”
She took one hesitant step forward, “Mother?”
Trees parted to reveal a moonlit glade. Three figures stood there. Their pale faces turned to her, and she recognized them: her mother and her young brother and sister. Her mother held out her arms. With a faint cry Maretha ran into them.
“Have you kept well, little saint?” Her mother’s voice held the warmth of comfort and safety. Small hands clutched at her legs and arms, the familiar grasp of her young siblings. “Have you kept care of your father as I asked you? Helped him with all your heart and soul? Done what he asked of you without complaint? That is the duty I passed to you, little saint, to support your father in all things.”
“I have, Mother,” she cried, “I have.” She began to reach up to touch her mother’s face, but her hands were pinioned to her sides. She tried to move her legs, could not. Thick vines like ropes were growing up her, twining around her, trapping her. The familiar, loved faces had vanished; growth snaked around her, ragged-edged leaves like giants’ mouths smothering, enclosing her, tightening around her throat.
“No!” She could not break loose of the twisting vegetation. Terrified, she struggled wildly to free herself. A great wind swept down on them, scattering leaves and branches and vine into nothing, and she stood alone in a silent glade.
A branch snapped in the forest behind. She fled on.
She ran for a while heedless of the little horrors inhabiting the trees until shortness of breath forced her to pause. Under her bare feet the ground felt moist, almost slimy. A rustling, some movement through the undergrowth, and she turned—but it was only Professor Farr.
“Father! Father! Thank the Lady!” He started at her voice and looked vaguely about himself. She rushed over to him. “Oh, Father! You came to look for me.”
He clasped the hands she proffered, tucked one under his elbow and drew her away through the forest. “Of course, my dear,” he said with the characteristic absentmindedness that always underlay his words. “I need you. You seem to have run away from your responsibilities.”
“Not from you, Father,” she protested, secure in his grip.
“Not from me,” he agreed. “From your husband.” He pulled her along and ahead she saw the earl, waiting. As they neared, that veneer of handsomeness with which his sorcery endowed him began to peel away. It sloughed off him like skin, revealing a hideous old man with festering sores on his face and bony hands riddled with maggots and living, writhing things. He opened his mouth to speak but a long red thing more like a tentacle curled out, reaching for her.
She jerked away from her father, but his grasp did not give at all. The creature that was her husband slithered closer, wheezing and choking, and fire began to rim it, in preparation for her immolation, the sacrifice that would bring it her power.
Thunder shook the air above, followed hard by a shaking in the earth itself, so violent that she was thrown to the ground as the abomination before her shattered into pieces. Her father’s grip tore away from her arm.
The trembling ceased abruptly. When she could raise her head, both were gone. She sat back on the thick loam and buried her head in her hands, uncaring of what might creep up behind her.
“Maretha.” His voice.
She looked up.
He stood some ten paces from her, his hands held out, palms open to her in the eternal posture of the sup
plicant. His shirt was torn and dirty, his hair disordered, his boots scuffed and marked by his passage through the wood.
“I have been a fool, Maretha,” he said. If his voice was soft, almost entreating, it still had at its core that hardness that he had so long cultivated. It was true that he was severe, self-absorbed, difficult, but did that mean that he could not change? He had become angry with her once—was that not a sure sign of regard? And once, that once when he had danced with her, she had caught him looking at her in a strange, questioning way, as if he had just realized that there was an answer in her for him, to a question he had never before thought to ask.
“Forgive me,” he said.
He was beautiful. He might have been the avatar of her heart’s desire, created whole out of the elements and the very soul of the forest. And in any case, she had loved him since the day she had first met him in the library.
She rose and went to him. He enfolded her in his arms, and as she embraced him, she felt more than saw him draw the knife and stab her through the heart.
Chapter 23:
The Seeker
“SANJAY! THANK GOD YOU’RE here.” Chryse ran to hug her husband as he came up the last slope to the little hollow that hid the western stairwell. “As I was hiking up here I saw two people go down the central staircase, and I would swear it was Professor Farr and Thomas Southern. They didn’t come back up. Was it them?”
