The Big Book of Modern Fantasy

by The Big Book of Modern Fantasy (retail) (epub)

  I fell back in my armchair, struck with thought. I could go to Arkhold, enter the Palace, talk with all the beaus of the ball. Chat with the prince himself, or even confront his swarthy wizard. Perhaps I would fill some glasses before the night was out. I did not fear their paltry human tricks and magics. The worst they could do to me was as nothing compared to the Beasts Outside.

  The only complication was Shina herself. I could not put her in danger; she could only be safe at the court ball if no one knew of our connection. I could make her swear to avoid me and show no recognition, but she was far too naive to maintain any good pretense.

  Then I laughed. It was very simple. Cinderella would certainly avoid me if she thought she was going to the ball against my will.

  THE DIARY OF ASHTERAT: JULY 15, 636

  I shouted: “King of the Taskres! I, Ashterat your daughter, would speak with you.”

  The ruby eyes of the golts gleamed in the candlelight. The pendulum faltered and was still. My voice trailed into silence. Mennach had been trapped when I was only a child. He has never spoken since. When they deformed his body they also stole his voice. Because he could not speak, I always spoke to him in ceremony. With official court formality. Also, I am very afraid of him. My father, the silent idol in his ebony altar.

  I placed a terra-cotta cup in front of the silent clock and removed the scarf that covered it. “Here is your price, dread king! I crave the boon of two nights’ peaceful sleep before my journey to Arkhold.” I stepped back, and I let him silently feast.

  He might have helped me of his own free will, my father, but he had no such free will. They broke his will long ago, and since they were too weak to kill him, they trapped him inside the clock. He has become a wish-granting machine. His price: royal blood. The greater the demand, the greater his price. Only royal blood will do: that is part of Mennach’s Curse.

  Once we used Shilzad’s blood, then Hildur’s or my own. The choices were narrowing. Perhaps the “royal blood” of the house of Harkur would do. I cursed the evil chance that had brought Prince Lavendul here, and had him die in this very room before the clock, unknown, unrecognized.

  THE DIARY OF ASHTERAT: JULY 18, 636

  Preparations for the journey. Shina pleading with me, sobbing, losing her temper. I finally silenced her with a mild little spell and locked her in her room to keep her out of the way.

  I created a ball gown for her from an exquisite violet-blue velvet, striped in gold. Veil, jewelry, gems, and crystal slippers. A vial of blue perfume, rouge for her cheeks, lustrous black for brows and lashes. I soaked her scarf in aphrodisiac, leaving nothing to chance. Then I hid all these gifts.

  I myself wore green.

  For Shina, a splendid carriage with four white chargers. My carriage was green with black chargers. Shina wouldn’t need a forged invitation. It was simpler for me to enchant the guards at the gate.

  Finally, I needed agents to release Shina from her locked room and give her all these gifts when the time was ripe. Nothing simpler—I called some golts from the Outside, fellows of my father’s golts in the clock. I bound their mischievous minds, their piercing teeth and their lust for blood with a strong secure spell. To spare Cinderella the shock, I cast upon them a guise that made these nasty goblins resemble her beloved little animals. Every true Taskre knew how to use golts properly, when needed.

  Then I went to bed and in exchange for my cup of blood I slept for thirteen hours straight.

  I woke up beautiful.

  THE DIARY OF ASHTERAT: JULY 19, 636

  A thousand wax white candles burned in crystal chandeliers and gilded wall sconces. Flames glittered in the courtiers’ eyes and jewels. The ballroom was a museum of exquisite court couture, and mannered gestures, and weak, epicene faces. I waited breathlessly for Shina. I was sure of one thing: she outshone any of the female aristocrats.

  A captain of the royal guard approached me. His arrogant swagger and ambitious squint made him a sure candidate for the Question tonight. He spoke from behind a cupped hand. “His Highness Prince Rassigart seeks a private audience with you, Madame Astra.” I trembled at the thought of a possibly shattering confrontation with the Prince. I was here in all my power, with the dread power of Mennach’s Curse.

  The Captain led me to an iron door in an obscure corner, and to the small room beyond. He ushered me through the door and he closed it at once, from the outside. It was deeply gloomy in the room, but my eyes adjusted swiftly.

  There sat the Prince. He was not dressed for a ball.

  He wore a plain white shirt, his collar conspicuously open. The window to a garden hung open behind him, chill and glimmering. His hair was starry with night-dew and the air hung heavy with the damp reek of clay from the garden. I felt tension burning along his nerves, his will locked like steel to keep the fear at bay.

  “You wanted me to come,” I said bluntly. No court niceties here. To treat him as my equal was an honor, not an insult, and he knew it.

  “That horse you gave to me is not of flesh and blood,” he said, with equal bluntness.

  “Is it a worse horse, for that?”

  “No. It’s the best horse I’ve ever had. Finer than royal stallions of the most exalted bloodlines.”

  “Why be unsatisfied, then?”

  He rose and came toward me. Either he had very good eyesight, or he knew every inch of this dark little room by heart. “I’m very satisfied,” he told me slowly. “Everyone agrees that I must be satisfied. My brother is dead and nothing can keep me from the throne.” Anger rose in his voice. “I’m very satisfied! Except that I never wanted any of this!”

  His anger was real enough, but he had no discretion. He was as young as my Shina, and nearly as naive. I laughed silently and placed my hands on the bare slopes of his neck and shoulders.

  “But Rassigart! What has your brother’s death to do with my horse?” I said, and my voice sounded sweet even to my own ears. He was shocked to have me touch him and stepped back quickly, letting my hands fall.

  “I asked my good friend Gallengur to investigate certain doings in your town,” he told me sharply. “A vile creature that attacks lonely houses at night, and ambushes travelers after dusk. Victims found with their throats slashed and not a drop of blood left in them.”

  I shrugged. “I’ve heard such rumors, too.”

  “They are not rumors, madame. My man Gallengur has seen some of the corpses himself.”

  Gallengur must surely be that southern wizard, I thought. I made a mental note to add brave Gallengur to my list of candidates for the Question. I should have tracked Gallengur more closely in my Mirror. Perhaps he’d seen Hildur and tracked her himself—though not back to Bourgeois House.

  The prince—full of brave curiosity and reckless of consequences had followed those rumors in person. Perhaps Rassigart would have come to my town even without my lures. Why had he not brought his pet wizard with him? My thoughts raced ahead—of course, the court wizard would have been searching for Lavendul. Searching many days and nights, with all his craft—until he had proved that the prince, dead or alive, was no longer in the World Inside.

  I glanced at the Prince’s bared throat and smiled gently. So that was it! He had linked Hildur’s attacks, his brother’s disappearance, and my horse, and he had reached his own conclusions. The young Prince was courageous—or thought he was. He was merely reckless. To needlessly place himself in such personal danger was not the work of a statesman. This was no mere vampire he was trifling with. He needed a lesson in fear.

  I gestured in the darkness, and a binding spell caught him. He lost his voice, his hands.

  “If Gallengur is right—and he is,” I told him slowly, “then this creature you describe could be very near.”

  He grew tense, his worst suspicions confirmed. He tried to break free—cry aloud, draw a dagger, ring the
bell he had cleverly placed on the table. He only swayed in place, an icy chill gripping his flesh. His muscles knotted; he tried his best, but he moved not at all. I saw him grow pale as he realized the full extent of his helplessness.

  “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” I said, with poisonous sweetness. “To lure a vampire into your trap? That was a naive plan, my Prince. Despite all your fine precautions, wasn’t it stupid and reckless to leave yourself alone with her—in the dark?”

  He struggled hard with the spell, concentrating now on reaching for his dagger. His hands would not obey his will. His mouth was sealed.

  “You’ve positioned your guards, and ordered them to rush in with your first call.” I laughed at him. “But now your tongue is stiff. I know about that dagger up your sleeve. Why don’t you pull it out and brandish it? What’s the matter with you, Rassigart? Your soldiers are only a few feet away! If you have any clever new stratagems, you’d better try them quickly. You haven’t much time left.”

  Maddened by his impotence, Rassigart shuddered with the effort to move. In spite of that, he had not yet panicked, and I admired him for his strength of will. In the end, though, I knew I would be able to break him. He was still master of his fear but he had never known slow and deliberate cruelty.

  “You’re bound like a fly in the web,” I whispered, moving to his side. “Whatever may happen now, you can’t stop it.”

  In the silence I could hear the frenzied pounding of his heart against his ribs. I put my hands inside his shirt, through his open collar, and felt his self-control shatter at the caress. Sweat ran down his chest.

  I drew both my thumbnails down his neck, from earlobe to collarbone. Then I did it again. The slow touch terrified him more deeply and intimately than any threatening word. It was the worst moment of his young life. I felt him cursing me within his mind as he prepared to die. He was suffocating. Almost blacking out.

  I grabbed his arms and shook him violently. “Prince Rassigart! Wake up!”

  He gasped for air, the deadly terror ebbing.

  “If I were what you thought I was, you’d be dead now,” I said, in a new voice. “But you’re still alive, as you can see. There is no danger.”

  Feebly he tried to brush me aside; the binding spell was leaving his flesh. I snapped my fingers and the unlit candles in the room leapt into flame. Light showed his face, gone haggard in a few moments. By the curse of Mennach, but he was young. Only seventeen. Younger than I by centuries.

  I helped him to his chair.

  He would not dare to question me any longer. And I had already learned much from his indiscretion.

  He was limp and silent. Too long. “Touch my teeth, if you don’t believe what I tell you,” I offered sweetly. “They’re only common teeth.” He looked up, eyes blank and wet, and I saw then that I had crushed him. He was like withered leaves inside. For the moment, his spirit was well and truly broken. There was no one he could tell about this experience, no one he could confess to. The humiliation was too deep and too personal; to tell other men about it would only invite mockery. It was just between the two of us now, a dark liaison. A secret act of bondage and cruelty. It was a permanent bond.

  “It’s time for the ball,” I said. “Call your valet and dress yourself properly.”

  He stood up without a word, shaking violently. I was sorry for the lesson I had given him, and I leaned toward him, careful not to touch him. “After this,” I said, “other creatures of darkness will have a harder time with you. You should know that, at least.”

  He said nothing, but staggered out the door. He waved aside the waiting captain and three armed guards.

  “You’re too young, Rassigart,” I hissed at his back, so the others could not hear. “When you’re older we will meet again.”

  * * *

  —

  Shina glowed like a sapphire in a golden ring. Adoring gazes followed her every move as she made her way through the ballroom toward the throne. I stepped aside into shadow, and watched as she made her best curtsey toward the King. It was quite easy to influence the King. When I was through with him, he sincerely believed Shina to be a baroness from the West, a distant relation from some cadet wing of the family that had never really existed.

  Then the Prince arrived. He was deathly pale, but I doubt that anyone noticed. Still more a boy than a man, he was nevertheless impressive, and the courtiers, as one, bowed low in respect. I did the same.

  The dancing began. Subtly, I guided the steps of Shina and the Prince until they were face-to-face. When their eyes finally met they were both astounded by the grace of Providence that had somehow, against all odds, united them here. Rassigart was charmed by this candid young ingénue, and Shina had already adored the Prince for weeks. When the music resumed she slipped at once into his arms, a vision in blue against the gold and black of his royal mantle. Nothing and no one would separate them now—at least, not for the rest of the night. I let the lovers be, and went about my own grim business.

  Five men died quietly that night. Every useless death stripped away more of my false hopes and left me shriveling with despair. The brave Captain of the Guards was first to fall, followed shortly by Gallengur, the canny wizard of the South. The moment my Question was made clear to them, the courtiers grasped for the cup of power with deadly eagerness. Five men in a single night! Even my own endless life could not make up for so many shortened ones. But how was I to know what man might pass the test? Somehow, some man must be strong enough to survive the transformation and protect the World Inside from the threat of the Beasts. I would gladly die myself, to find that answer.

  As I skulked sorrowfully back into the ballroom, I almost collided with Cinderella. Her veils flapping, she was dashing up the wide staircase to meet her Prince on the terrace. In her eagerness she looked neither right nor left, until she was suddenly brought up short, face-to-face with me. She went ashen, for she was here without my permission.

  Rather than do anything reasonable, she panicked at once, turned on her heel and stumbled off down the staircase. Her skirts impeded her, and she lost a shoe. She didn’t bother to pick it up, but instead snatched off her other crystal slipper and used its sharp heel to chop her way through the crowd. This gaucherie won many a pained, unfriendly look for the King’s young relation from the West. The false identity scheme wasn’t working, so I took a moment to wipe the memory from the King’s royal mind. If Shina had to flee, it was better that she not leave too many traces.

  Cinderella dashed through the guards—still stunned with enchantment, they conspicuously failed to notice her—and jumped headlong into her carriage. The golt coachman whipped up the golt horses, and off they went.

  Somewhere, a clock happened to strike midnight. There stood the glamour-struck Prince, perplexed, clutching the abandoned shoe, staring after his chimerical beauty, who had fled without a single civil good-bye. He was as memorable as a painting.

  THE DIARY OF ASHTERAT: JULY 20, 636

  Shina was meek and hushed next morning, dreading a good scolding. A mild chiding did seem in order. “You’ve charmed the Prince,” I told her. “You quite spoiled the rest of the event for him when you ran away. He wouldn’t look at another woman all that night. If it weren’t for his royal duties as host, he would saddle up his best horse and come straight after you.” This chased the worry from her face and put her into hours of erotic daydream. I sent her to her room. It was time to move the house.

  Moving the entirety of Bourgeois House was no elementary spell and the preparations for it consumed the whole day. I chose another, suitably obscure city, hundreds of miles away, as our new locale. The Mirror found me a suitably neglected and decrepit building, an outer shell for the inner contents of Bourgeois House, including Cinderella, Shilzad and myself. For form’s sake, and to allay the alarm of our new neighbors, I sent along a luggage-cart manned by golts.r />
  When we were gone, there was nothing left of our old Bourgeois House but a shell of empty walls—precisely what Rassigart discovered, when he arrived that evening on an exhausted horse.

  I watched in my Mirror as he stood in the yawning doorway, trembling with weariness and rage. The abandoned walls were utterly featureless, because we had taken even the paint. No ceilings left either, not so much as a rafter, just the unnatural slopes of an unsupported roof. The whole interior of the building had been erased like a pencil drawing.

  “You won’t escape me, sorceress!” the Prince howled at the echoing walls.

  I laughed at him, from behind my Mirror. “It’s you who won’t escape,” I said aloud.

  THE DIARY OF ASHTERAT: AUGUST 8, 636

  My mother died tonight.

  I was uneasy all evening, sensing something momentous about to happen. Joy, terror…It was my presentiment of Shilzad’s death: her final decay, her liberation.

  I heard her rise from her bed in the middle of the night. No, not hearing—rather, a feeling deep inside me, light as a cold breeze. It broke me from my usual uneasy dreams and I awoke and unbuckled my armor. I always slept in armor now. It made the cushions of my bed seem as rough as horsehair rugs, but I had to sleep with proper safeguards. The waking world was a cozier place for me, so I put aside the night’s breastplate and my daggers.

  I slipped silently into the hall, looked toward my mother’s room, and saw her standing there, in the open doorway.