Night's Sorceries

by Tanith Lee

  Young and blue the night and fierce the stars. This, and her awkward seat on the ass, her hope and fear, prevented her from associating the highway of her dream with the highway by which she now left the town. While, in the later hour, groaning from the ride, when Marsineh entered the outskirts of the woods, she was far removed from making any note that these were no other than the forests of the nightmare, into which dread Kolchash had carried her.

  • • •

  Close on midnight, Dhur sat carousing with a collection of his friends in an upper room of the Turtle Dove Inn. The hunt had been unfruitful that day, for they had started only one mysterious thing in the silver gloaming before sunrise—and this had swiftly vanished. At noon, riding or idling under the pavilions of the trees, a young man or two had mentioned odd tales of the woods, that they were haunted by weird magics. Yet no sorcery came to tantalize them, and no beasts appeared to give them a chase and to fall before their spears and knives. “It is Dhur’s sad regret that keeps them away,” said one, partly in earnest. But Dhur did not seem regretful, or sad. He had cursed the lack of game, but in the upper room of the inn ate and drank with gusto, and now he reclined on his cushions and eyed the dancing-girl, even as he toyed with the lyre-girl’s plaited hair.

  “Sing a song of love,” said unsad Dhur, merrily, to the singing-girl.

  “Oh, handsome sir,” said she looking under her gilded lids, “they say it is unwise to do so, here. For many years, so they say,” said she, melodiously, “two supernatural lovers have dwelled somewhere in the depths of the forest. And since no mortal love can rival theirs, it is unlucky to sing of any love but theirs.”

  “Sing, then, of theirs,” said Dhur. “Who are these paragons?”

  “Two demon things,” said the lyre-girl, and she hid her gilded eyes against Dhur’s shoulder.

  “He is fair,” said the dancing-girl, coming to lie across Dhur’s knee. “All golden, like a summer dawn. But she—”

  “She is black and white, white skin like the white rose, black hair like a cloud of black hyacinth,” the singer said, smiling at Dhur but not approaching him.

  “Her eyes are so blue,” murmured the lyre-girl, “that if she weeps, sapphires fall from them.”

  “May the gods give me such a wife!” cried one of the young men. “How I should berate and beat her, she should be always in tears.”

  “This one,” said the dancer, “even you, gentle lord, would not dare to beat.”

  “Well,” said Dhur, “but sing the song.”

  But at that moment, another servant of the inn burst into the room and announced: “My Lord Dhur, you must come down. A messenger has arrived, half dead, babbling he will speak only to you.”

  Much alarmed, as may be supposed, Dhur sprang to his feet and hastened down the inn stair to the chamber where the arrival had been stored.

  Now it must be said at this juncture that it had long seemed to Marsineh that she had regarded Dhur often, and been nearly ceaselessly in his company. And this was because she had dreamed of him almost every night, and daydreamed and thought of him more regularly still. His face and voice were as known to her as her father’s and mother’s. But in actuality, the two young people had met only on some six occasions, and not at all since the marriage had been arranged.

  Therefore, though mostly insensible as she was from the agony of her unpracticed ride, and the enormity of all that had befallen her, when Marsineh lifted her swimming eyes and beheld Dhur entering the chamber, she knew him at once, and the mad glad leap of her heart brought her to her feet. But Dhur, beholding Marsineh, three months unseen and clad as a draggled swooning boy, knew her not at all. The fact was, she was in love with him, and he, though he had liked her well enough, had never been in love with her.

  “Speak!” cried Dhur in some desperation, wondering if his father lay dead or the family home in ruins—for what else could such a frantic messenger portend?

  And Marsineh, pitiful girl, taking his wild gaze and tone for recognition and reception, flung herself on his breast.

  “Ah, you will save me? I am lost without you!” she exclaimed.

  “There, there,” said Dhur, patting her sternly on the back. “Brace yourself and say what has happened.”

  “Is it not”—wailed she—“immediately evident?”

  “Not at all. Come, speak out!” snapped Dhur, beginning to lose patience. And he held off, as he thought, the importunate fellow.

  “Well, I fled,” said Marsineh, trembling and teetering. “I had no choice. How could I suffer—that?”

  “Suffer what?” shouted Dhur, beside himself.

  “To resign myself to such thralldom—his slave—when I had known the honey of those hopes you had engendered—”

  Dhur, his thumbs in his belt, glowered upon the messenger.

  “Now,” roared Dhur, “cease this wittering, idiot boy, and tell me what has chanced—or I will have it flogged from you.”

  “But I am not—” began Marsineh. Then her voice faded. In that awful moment, everything came clear before her. Not only that her beloved had stayed deceived, that he believed her to be precisely what she had claimed—a pretty eunuch sent to bear tidings. No, not only that. With love’s keen and unbearable instinct she had suddenly become aware of the indifference, the inattention to herself as Marsineh, which alone could bring such a deception about. He might have come before her disguised in any manner he could devise: She would have seen through the cover instantly. But he did not know her—for he had never looked at her with any more than a glancing eye. He had not, as she had done, dreamed and pondered the object of his heart’s desire. Oh, now she understood why no word had come from him, why he had gone hunting on the day of her wedding. He had forgotten her.

  In that second her heart broke, and with such a loud crack, it woke her from her trance, her swoon, the dream itself, and everything. She saw what she had done, and how she was placed: A runaway, cast on the bosom of the world, quite friendless. For her one true friend, Yezade, was given to a fearful enemy, and only another enemy stood before Marsineh now. And the revelation was so appalling, it steadied her and made her wits dart alive.

  Dhur, who did not love Marsineh, would not help her. But since he was now her only means of survival, he must be pleaded with on the terms he offered.

  Marsineh dropped to her knees with a cry of mingled pains.

  “My lord,” she whined, “I am only a poor boy, and I have escaped from a cruel master. You forget, but once you saw me on the street and were kind to me. I beg you to allow me to serve you. Forgive my pretense. I carry no message. But do not refuse me the shelter of your service. Or my former master will kill me.”

  Dhur was so relieved to find his kith and kin unscathed, rather than grow angrier, he burst into laughter. (Oh, how it splintered the pieces of her already splintered heart.)

  “You wretch,” said he, “I have a mind to take you on for your impudence. But who is this fiend you have run from?”

  “His name is Kolchash,” said Marsineh, for a variety of poignant reasons.

  “Kolchash? Now, I have heard that name. . . .”

  “He is come to the town in order to marry a hapless maiden. The lady must be bemoaned.”

  “Yes, a wedding—I think I was told of it. One of our neighbor’s daughters—the tall thin girl, or she with a nose like a stork’s bill.” (Marsineh, oh Marsineh!) “But come now, you exaggerate the vices of Kolchash. He is a rich old man, and like all rich old men, is envied. And you are an unproven sauce yourself. But I am in a mild mood. I will accept you for the duration of my sojourn in this forest. You shall attend me at my hunting.”

  Marsineh prostrated herself as a grateful slave should do—or so they had done in her father’s house. Dhur stepped over her and was gone, laughing, back to the top of the inn.

  Presently a servant came and shooed her out to the
stable.

  Here she lay awake all night, from the ache of her bruised limbs and her broken heart. And through a chink in the wall she saw the blooming window high above, where Dhur and his friends drank and sang, until the lamps were put out, and then the window was a dark flower that rustled and breathed, and once a soft cry fell from it to the ground like a ring of gold. Near dawn, the three girls of the inn descended and passed by, the singer, dancer and musician, and they spoke in low voices of Dhur, and his good looks and his generosity.

  Then Marsineh wept on the flank of the riding-ass which, thinking her tears only a heavy dew, did not trouble itself with them.

  Despite its night of pleasures the hunting party was abroad before the sun rose. Marsineh, exhausted by misery and sleeplessness, crept from the stable at their shouts.

  “Now what is that animal there?” inquired Dhur, seeing the riding-ass taking its ease amid the straw. “Surely that is the very beast my father loans our porter.”

  Marsineh, not wishing to return the porter an ill turn for a good, meekly confessed she had stolen the ass.

  “What an imp it is,” said Dhur. And with another laugh he gave her a clap on the shoulder that nearly felled her.

  “A pale imp, a sickly imp,” said the other young men, “not worth its imp’s hire. Look at the drooping lily. And how is he to go with us, Dhur?”

  “Why, on that very ass,” said Dhur.

  “I pray you, no,” said Marsineh, so stiff and sore she could have wept afresh.

  “How else?” said Dhur blithely. “You are a weakling and certainly cannot run to keep up. Ride along behind us as best you may, and be careful not to lose us, for if you stray in the trees I shall not come searching for you. Do not make a sound either, for the game is already fly enough in these woods.”

  Presently the hunt set out, fresh as a daisy, eating and drinking as it went. And Marsineh, choking down a little crust, crawled upon the annoyed ass which was as dismayed by this as she.

  “Follow, slave!” cried Dhur back to them, “or I shall send you home to Kolchash.”

  So the hunt rode through the deep reaches of the forest, and Marsineh on the ass went shambling after, it pausing with frequence to enjoy mouthfuls of the turf, she entreating it between moans of agony to make haste.

  Beyond the road and the clearing where stood the inn, the trees flowed on like a tide. As the light began to come, the great height of the forest revealed itself, and in the dark green umbra of its upper stories, sun-rays lodged firm as spears, and birds rushed to and fro. On the long enameled boughs the lizards rested upside down, staring with stony eyes, and sometimes a serpent stirred itself to gaze after the riders, such alien amounts of noise and legs, for neither of which faculties a serpent had any use. Among the trunks much lower down, where the young men on their horses passed without a thought and through which the wretched girl was borne willy-nilly, the webs of spiders hung between the broad leaves of the bushes, with the morning dews tinkling upon them. All was elusive and essential in the forest, even by day. And all ways appeared as one. Very soon Marsineh was lost as a traveler in the depths of a lake. And strive as she would with the ass, the party of young men seemed going always farther and farther off. Sometimes she had no sight of them at all, and only heard their voices. And it came to her at last to say, What matter then if I lose Dhur? He is already lost to me. And for myself, I may as well die here, and let the cruel birds and lizards pick clean my bones. For no one cares for me, I can expect no sanctuary. Better I had gone to the evil of Kolchash.

  And she halted the ass (which had halted in any case, but in her despair she did not notice), and kissed its face and forgave it the pain it had caused her. Then she disengaged herself from its back and hobbled alone, in a mist of forlorn sadness, away into the vast wood—which still she had not recognized.

  • • •

  So much then, so far, for Marsineh.

  But in all this while—a dusk, a night, a dawn—what of Yezade, that beautiful half-sister who had taken the bride’s place?

  As long ago as three hours past the previous evening’s moonrise, the wedding had been concluded, the firecrackers let off, and the feast exposed. But precisely then one had stepped forward, yet another of Lord Kolchash’s household retainers, and declared the bridegroom would now depart with his wife.

  There were no protests. The marriage gifts had outshone and even outweighed the magnificence of the betrothal items. The bride herself had modestly kept within her veil, and for fear she might be sallow with terror and sobbing, none of her family had insisted she do otherwise. Kolchash, before the altar fires, had raised the veil sufficiently to satisfy himself, presumably, and custom. On his side he had continued his own swathings, and when the shadow of his voluminous headcloth bared a portion of his face, he was seen to be masked in black lacquer. All told, an early start to the honeymoon seemed prudent.

  Away into the night then the bridal pair were packed, under a starry sky yet trailed and scored by the pink anemones of fireworks.

  The bride rode in a litter; the groom upon a coal-black horse. . . . Yet it was difficult to espy him amid the thronging of his retinue.

  Under the town gate, along the highway, the procession went, lit with lamps, but without a note of music or song, and thus reached in an hour or so the forest, which it entered.

  After a space, the litter’s motion stopped. A shadowy figure parted the curtains: “Madam, the Lord Kolchash desires that you alight.”

  And the bride (still modestly veiled) was helped to the lawns of the forest and conducted over a slight running stream with one stepping stone, to a pavilion that glowed like nacre. This she entered.

  The interior of the tent was furnished luxuriously, and on a silver perch squatted a fiery bird with a tall crest and a long tail. It watched her with a cool pale eye. At the tent’s back stood an icon of black and gold, which—if she had not beheld her groom at the marriage—the bride might have taken for a statue. But she had seen the statue move about before, lifting its gold-gloved hands of long black nails to her veil, and directing its masked face this way and that under the heavy diadem. Accordingly she now addressed it: “Good evening, lord husband,” and with a bold gesture, threw off at once her own covering.

  The mask only turned a little. Eyes glittered behind the eye-holes, in hiding.

  “Good evening, my wife,” said a rusty voice. “Will you not sit and refresh yourself with wine and food?”

  “You are most kind, my lord. But not a morsel of food or a drop of liquid shall pass my lips,” said Yezade, “until you yourself have both eaten and drunk.”

  “Dear wife,” said the voice, “I have already supped.”

  “Then I,” said Yezade, “will not dine. For it seems to me,” she added, “that I have no appetite to eat or drink when my husband is so displeased with me, he will not show me his face.”

  At this there was a pause.

  Eventually the icon-figure seemed to quiver all over. The voice spoke harshly now.

  “Dear wife, can it be you wish to look on that which, out of tasteful concern for you, I have concealed?”

  “Dear husband,” said Yezade, “since you have wedded me and brought me to your pavilion, I am assured that before the day is born once more, I shall have rendered up to you my virgin state. And that you will, besides, have seen me naked as the moon. Of you, in return, I require only a glimpse of your visage. This is surely not an unreasonable boon to ask of my lord and lover.”

  A second pause then ensued, lasting longer than the first.

  “Dear husband,” said Yezade at length, “my mother, before she died, had a gift of foretelling, and this she foretold for me—that if I would gain for myself a great fortune, I must marry another bride’s husband. This riddle for many years I did not comprehend, until it came about that my master-father’s daughter, whom I much resemble in all but we
alth and position, was contracted to a notorious lord, one Kolchash. Yourself. And so, using a charm of my mother’s, I sent this silly girl a bad dream of her wedding-eve, and scared her to flight. I therefore took her place at the bridal altar, and here we are. Now you see, I am not the least afraid of you, to inform you of all this. Therefore you may believe I do not fear your looks, and will see them. Unmask!”

  There was then a third pause, longer than the preceding two.

  Yezade, getting no answer to either confession or demand, rose to her feet and walked without hesitation across the tent. And at that, the fiery bird let out a snicker and turned its back to her, but the figure of Kolchash did not move.

  “Now, now,” said Yezade. And reaching up, she caught the edge of the black lacquer mask and tore it away.

  Yezade let out a cry. She stood staring.

  There on the carpet lay the head of Kolchash, which she had pulled right off. For it was the head of a doll, a clockwork thing, and in its sockets the glass eyes rolled, while from the rent neck some strands of wires stuck forth and fizzed with peculiar sparks and energies, that swiftly died.

  And as they did so, the light of the tent itself fluttered. It dulled and reddened and went out like a low sigh.

  There was then only blackest dark. And Yezade found herself standing on the grass under the trees, not a lamp anywhere, not a tent or a pole, not a man nor a horse, nor any attendant. Alone in the forest and the night.