The Big Book of Modern Fantasy

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

  The long starvation had stripped her of all femininity; she was Lady Death now, white shroud, gaunt skin that bound a skeleton in leather. Black rags hung from both her hands, dangling like cobwebs from the dry, unhealed, unfestering wounds in her arms. I was amazed to see her on her feet.

  She walked down the corridor, face set, eyes blank and rigid. She stepped into a closet, opened a chest. I heard her nails scrabbling at the wooden lid, the leathery crackling of her skin.

  She was choosing a dress. After another moment she rose with a shining wad of fabric under her arms, all mixed with the dangling rags. Then, with one leaden step, she moved directly into the World Outside—and I followed her.

  In an instant we were at the Taskre Palace—or rather, its ruins. It was night here.

  I had not been here for ages. The Palace had fallen during my childhood, in an orgy of looting and burning, and what memories I had of it were bitter. The walls were empty, gems long gone, paneling stripped away, marble floor shattered and covered with filth. To think that once this had been King Mennach’s Grand Hall.

  I stayed in the shadows behind my mother, flitting from column to column, pressing myself against them. Her skeletal body was silhouetted in the moonlight of a glassless window. Then she spread out the bundle in her arms—a queenly robe of the finest armelin. Nothing but holes now, rotten, threadbare, but what else could be expected? She threw it over her bony shoulders with the grace of a monarch. A golden circlet gleamed in her taloned hands: the tarnished crown of the Taskre Queen, unseen for countless decades in the bottom of that chest. The symbol of Taskre majesty had once looked so lovely on her raven tresses; now she fitted it to her hairless skull. She bowed to the silent applause of long-vanished courtiers, with infinite dignity.

  The Queen my mother had arrived at her final rendezvous. Now I saw another presence. Just for a moment. A deeper darkness in the shadow, emerging from the depths of night, arms spread in welcome. A rippling shadow in a cold draft of wind, a bodiless phantom. Both cruel and merciful. Another woman. Lady Death.

  The two Queens embraced one another.

  Shilzad died without a struggle. She fell slowly, and the circlet crown jolted free and rolled off into the ruins. And then I heard, from no direction at all, a terrible voiceless cry from the Sleeper in the Clock. A howl from the abyss, a wail of grief for the woman lost to him so long ago.

  DIARY OF ASHTERAT: SEPTEMBER 26, 636

  I have not written in this diary for many days. I haven’t the patience to write in my diary when my life has no crisis. Nothing important, nothing remarkable.

  I have watched in my Mirror as envoys from the court of Harkur have been methodically scouring the entire countryside. Carrying the crystal slipper.

  I’ve seen them try the slipper on the feet of countless women. There’s nothing particularly dainty about the size and shape of Cinderella’s feet, but I created that slipper for her alone. No other woman alive can succeed in wearing that slipper. Because of this, I know that the royal envoys will reach this place, in due time. I calculate it to be about the middle of October.

  THE DIARY OF ASHTERAT: OCTOBER 13, 636

  It seems my calculation was off by a few days. The envoys have been very industrious and are half a week early.

  They arrived this afternoon and proceeded directly to the city square. There they bellowed out a royal edict and demanded that every woman of marriageable age gather in the square at six o’clock. Then the envoys retired to a tavern.

  They still fulfill their duties in all respect and obedience, but the long routine of fruitless search has apparently dented their morale a bit.

  I gave Shina a lovely new pair of gleaming pearly stockings, and left her happily scrubbing her feet in the kitchen washtub. As for me, I am going to retire in good order to the Forest Mansion.

  THE DIARY OF ASHTERAT: OCTOBER 15, 636

  I don’t know why I changed my mind and insisted on witnessing their meeting. My presence in the royal palace could only provoke the Prince. Perhaps he would explode in terror or rage, and I would have to flee and move Bourgeois House once more. Despite all these forebodings, I found myself almost as eager for this meeting as the blushingly lovely Mademoiselle Young Bride.

  It was evening when we arrived at Arkhold. We were housed in the Palace as the chief envoy went to carry the happy news to the Prince. I wore a heavy green veil, which I never put aside, and the servants took me for Shina’s mother. Certain men might well have recognized me from the ball, but those men were dead.

  We met for a supper and tête-à-tête, the Prince, Shina, and I.

  The warmth of their reunion was a bit cooled by proper etiquette. With a chaperone present they did not dare to embrace. Rather than kissing, they talked—at great length, and on the Prince’s side, very ornamentally. The Prince was shining-eyed and reverent and Shina blushed like a ripe strawberry. The thought of these two virgins at their wedding night made me smile behind my veil.

  When the Prince addressed me formally I was forced to unveil myself. He stared at me as if I were a ghost, or his own death. Indeed, I might be both those things.

  “Your Highness’s kind greeting touches me deeply,” I said. “I am Esther, Shina’s foster sister.” I thanked him for his kindness. I thanked him for his invitation. I thanked him for the honor done my family: words, words, words. It was going to be a very long night.

  * * *

  —

  Shina, exhausted by excitement and the long journey, fell asleep at midnight. The Prince and I were made of sterner stuff, and soon afterward I received a discreet royal billet-doux demanding an immediate audience with Rassigart, if I had “any trace of honor.” We met in the dark of night at a small, out-of-the-way Palace room, very similar to the last one. Carelessness was obviously Rassigart’s dominant trait.

  “Astra, how is it that you dare to enter my Palace once again?”

  “I’ve never dared that, Your Highness. I’ve always been invited here. By you.”

  “I invited the girl who lost her slipper at my ball. I never asked for a sorceress!” He rose threateningly, his eyes blazing, but I did not bother to bind him with a spell. He was already bound, for I was Shina’s sister, and to denounce or attack me as a sorceress was to lose his beloved.

  I shrugged. “It’s not my fault that Shina is my dear relation.”

  “I can’t believe she is any such thing. You must have murdered her parents to become her evil guardian. What terrible thing did you do to them?”

  I laughed in his face. “You’ll be a weak ruler, Rassigart, for you can’t control your passions. You’re in no position now to succumb to some passing fit of pique. How much abuse do you think you can heap on me, before I demand my honor and satisfaction?” I frowned at him. “Now sit down, shut up, and listen to me. Shina’s father is long dead, he was mortal and he died of a cancer, as mortals often do. Shina’s mother died very young. My mother married her father despite the best we could do to dissuade her, and now my mother is dead as well. I’m all the family she has left.”

  “That’s a strange set of changes, Astra. If Astra is indeed your name. Is it Esther now? Are any of these aliases real?”

  “My name is Ashterat,” I said patiently. “There were four of us: my mother, my sister Hildur, myself, and Cinderella—that is, your darling Shina. Hildur is gone now. She fell to the lust for blood, as your man Gallengur so cleverly discovered.”

  “Hildur,” he said. “I’ve heard that name before.”

  “One presumes that Your Highness has read that name. In the Golden Codex of Arkhold. Try to recall your lessons in the Legend of Mennach.”

  He turned his hack on me, for a long time. When he faced me again, all his anger was gone. Instead: open loathing. “So you’ve chosen to toy with me, Taskre princess?” he said. He was full of icy control now, with a murderous
edge. “You chose to torture me because, unlike yourself, I’m a human being. Merely some human being.” His eyes were cold. “You disgust me.”

  He stepped nearer, trembling with revulsion. “The legends all lie! You don’t match your glowing reputation, Ashterat. You Taskres claim to protect us from the World Outside—well, who ever asked you to? It’s a sham, a confidence trick—just a way to remind us humans of our impotence. You’re not our guardians, but our exploiters. You hold yourselves above us, and you think yourselves too fine for us, and you toy with us.” He locked eyes with me. I shuddered to see the changes roiling within his mind. His hot and righteous anger hammered at his soul like a smith’s work at an anvil. Tempering formless metal into a blade. In a passing flume of mental sparks I saw the last of his childhood vanish.

  “You don’t speak!” he shouted. “Believe me, you’ll never see me afraid of you again! Kill me if you think it will please you—an act that will make you even more loathsome than we already know you to be. If you have any conscience at all, your crimes should drive you crazy.”

  “Then let my conscience kill me, and don’t interfere with what I must do.”

  He seized me by the shoulders and brought his face very close. “Ashterat, during that ball there were five men murdered! All of them my dear friends—or, at the least, the Crown’s trusted servants. I know very well who killed them! Wherever you walk, there are corpses. Do you expect me to simply watch that happening? Are you laughing at me?”

  “You’re consumed to know my secrets, Prince. Five men dead, and yet you don’t ask me why. Why! The reasoning behind it.”

  “Can there be any reason for such crimes?”

  My face grew taut. Of course there was a reason. It was my Quest. My Quest, now weighed against the happiness of my only living sister. A conflict I’d hoped to avoid, that now yawned before my feet like the gate of Hell.

  Of course I could have asked Rassigart the Question. I could have put the Question to him during the ball, slipped that same cup into his hands that five dead men had grasped and gulped from so eagerly. Somehow I had managed not to think of Rassigart, somehow I had hidden him in the recesses of my own mind, and through that mercy spared him.

  There were excellent reasons to spare Rassigart. He was the last Crown Prince; if he too were lost, the death of his father the King would plunge the country into dynastic warfare. And my Cinderella loved Rassigart so much. And I did not want to kill this angry and careless boy, because I had a weakness for him. The curse of Mennach! The same weakness that I had for his brother.

  Immoral weakness. Shameful weakness.

  Compassion was treachery to my Quest. All men were equal before the Question. Suppose that Rassigart were the man. How many other men would die needlessly in his proper place?

  “I’ll tell you everything,” I said, and every word was like wormwood in my mouth. “I’ll tell you what I told those five dead men, and many others besides, and your noble brother, too.”

  I shrugged free from his hands. Then I seized him myself, and with a terrible strength I dragged him with me to the World Outside.

  When we arrived at length at the chamber with the clock, I gave Rassigart the goblet.

  THE DIARY OF ASHTERAT: OCTOBER 21, 636

  The celebration started yesterday and it will go on for five days straight. This royal fete will find permanent records in many places besides this, my diary. Harkur hasn’t seen a wedding of this size and extravagance since 558, when Rassigart’s great-grandfather tied the knot with a Southern princess. All this splendor looks very deliberate: to erase the bitterness of Lavendul’s death, and to obscure the humble origins of the chosen bride, all at one magnificent stroke.

  I had a chance to say farewell to my sister, to wish her the best of luck. I did not imagine I would have any chance to speak to Rassigart again. But he sought me out himself—and found me, alone, before my Mirror.

  “What’s this?” he said with scorn. “Princess Ashterat the Taskre, at her toilette? With her finery, trinkets and face paint?”

  “Do you imagine that everything human tires me, O Prince?”

  “I would have thought that centuries of life would have given you a bit more depth,” he said spitefully, and shut the double doors behind himself. He walked across the room to confront me.

  “I prefer the darker palaces of the World Outside,” I told him. “It’s true, I tried to seek real wisdom once. I read old scribblings on damp leather and yellowing parchment and crumbling rolls of papyrus. I’ve had a very long time to spend at learning, and I’ve read almost every work, major and minor, of the world’s philosophers…but Rassigart, there is nothing to all that. It’s all pretension and fraud.”

  “So you say.”

  “So, I came back to worldliness. I love beautiful dresses and exotic perfumes and I love to do my brows, to paint my lashes. I love to touch the flesh of naked men. I love a wild ride in darkness and the taste of cold rain on my face, even if it means I have to change my gown and re-do my coiffure afterward. Can you understand that? In a few centuries I grew very tired of everything that you think is eternal and wise. The only things I truly value now are frivolous and superficial.”

  His thoughts bristled with shocked disapproval and he waved his hand dismissively.

  “It’s very strange that a clean and decent girl like Shina could share the home of a creature like you.”

  “We didn’t discuss philosophy and I never bothered to instruct her in decadence!” I said, and I smirked. I stood in front of him and searched his face. How had he managed to do it? How had he survived the temptation that had killed Lavendul and Gallengur and so many others?

  “I’d like to have you jailed or executed,” he told me, with cold deliberation. “If it weren’t for Shina, I would do that without a qualm. After the wedding Princess Shina will dwell in my Palace and you will leave at once for your usual den of iniquity. It is my order that you should never meet her again.”

  It happened just as he wanted it.

  I didn’t bother to wait for the end of the celebration. I left today. One long step to reach the Forest Mansion. From there, to Bourgeois House. Weary with searching. Now, forever alone. I was less than honest when I praised the advantages of my feminine vanities. I had diversions fuller and more satisfying than merely human pleasures. And pains and sorrows also greater than human.

  Pondering our encounter in Forest Mansion, I hit upon the strange core of young Prince Rassigart: shy yet domineering, passionate but prudish. He was like someone I had missed for centuries. All of that lost to me now.

  He simply refused to drink the potion. He laughed in the frozen face of Mennach and he took up the filled goblet I offered and he dashed it to the floor. It shattered there into hundreds of pieces.

  THE DIARY OF ASHTERAT: UNDECIMBER 3, 644

  What a strange sensation to page back over this diary again, after more than seven years!

  The windowsills are heaped with winter snow, the fire crackles in the hearth, I’m muffled in a blanket and reading these pages. Seven years, but I am still Ashterat the Taskre, unchanged. What difference could a mere seven years make to me? I am no wiser, scarcely any older. Years of struggle and worry bring one no greater balance or insight. People may believe that suffering brings wisdom, but they ought to know better. All it brings is early senility.

  The attacks from the Beasts Outside have continued, sometimes fierce and frequent and spoiling all my nights. At other times, almost like a long weary truce between us. It has been like this for eight years now. I have survived it, but it has not made me more beautiful.

  I retrieved my neglected diary yesterday, because of a presentiment. I knew somehow that the tale told here, after a long interregnum, would continue in some epilogue. And I was right. This evening, a carriage and four royal horses brought me Cinderella again, for the
first time in seven years.

  Pacing back and forth in the room where she’d once lived—though in a different city, of course—she brought life and movement to my unearthly stillness and solitude. No one has been dusting in Cinderella’s room, and the golden laces of her courtier’s silk gown stirred up years of filth. Her innocence has faded, and so has her fragility and freshness, but they’ve not been replaced by what I expected for her: domestic contentment, matronly sensuality. She has an injured, fretful look, a face stiff with vengeance and enmity. She has given King Rassigart two daughters. Daughters only, no proper heir apparent. Court life has not been easy.

  As we talked, she tapped her golden slippered foot impatiently on the floor.

  “He’s filled the Palace with riffraff,” she said bitterly. “Debased cronies of his. Village idiots. Common harlots! Alley cats and mongrels and vermin! How can I bear it, Ashterat? I can’t stand another moment! No one shows me the proper respect.”

  I remembered the day of Shina’s sweet pity for a rabid fox and I had to marvel at the depth of the changes within her. Perhaps it was wiser to marvel at myself: stale, changeless, unmarked by any passion—petrified deep in the amber of time.

  “Why demand so much respect, Cinderella? You’re just a pretty little bourgeoise.”

  Her lips went thin and pale. “Never again call me Cinderella! Never!”

  “Maybe I’m right to remind you of the truth.”

  Shina’s hands went limp. Suddenly she was like a child again: a temperament like April weather. Mouth gone bitter with disappointment, her face was a mask of deep sorrow. “Oh, Ashterat! They remind me of that every day.”

  Her life was difficult, but I couldn’t rouse myself to pity her. Instead, I wondered what the passing years had done to her consort, King Rassigart.