by James Moore
He danced around on the lip of the Turkish bath, singing falsetto, “‘Toucha-toucha-toucha-touch me! I wanna feel di-i-irty! Whip me, beat me, mistreat me — Creature of the Night!’”
ilse snarled and lunged for the fiend, grappling him and carrying him over into the sulfur pool. And then she moaned in ecstasy as she touched him.
Charnas grinned, pulling her in close. “You told me to make you feel like a woman, to make you feel alive, and to take you to the heights of ecstasy. Any time I liked. A demon doesn’t have any power over you that you don’t give it.”
Ilse then felt the surge of ecstasy course through her, paralyzing her with pleasure and pain as Charnas continued to touch her and leer...
Ilse awoke to the terror of drowning, water filling her lungs. She thrashed her way to the surface, coughing and gagging, sulfur burning her throat and eyes, and struggled to the lip of the bath, throwing herself over and letting the fetid water drain out of her.
“Ah, there you are. I was told I might find you here. But really, Ilse, while the sulfur is wonderfully warm, if you want to wash your lungs, you'll find the effervescent tub much better for that purpose. Indeed, if you’ve soaked your lungs in that pool for any length of time, your breath will be reeking like a demon's for a week at least.”
Ilse gasped the last of the stinking water out onto the tiles, then looked up. Merrill stood there, poised and arrogant in his velvet jacket and smoking another of his trademark cigarettes.
The Andalusian gave her a condescending smirk and tapped his ash to drift down to the floor. “Honestly, ilse. Councilor Etrius is very indulgent, but he will be wanting to see you soon. You’d best make yourself ready. But that’s not why I’m here." He took another drag, then exhaled, glancing about the room before taking another puff. “The Councilor wishes to see Carl Magnuson, and last anyone saw of him, Ulugh’s little Turkish chit said he went in here, wanting to spend some time with you.”
Merrill blew out, watching the smoke drift, but apparently too bored to bother with smoke rings. “Far be it from me to interrupt an intimate moment, but we all must obey the wishes of the Council."
He said the last with a sharp flick of his cigarette that belied the malice underneath. “Do you know where he is? Because if he’s in that pool with you, he’d best have learned how to breathe sulfur water, or else Councilor Etrius will be very displeased.” He took another drag, inhaling deeply. “For a change, the Council wishes to see one of your lovers alive.”
“He — He’s not here." Ilse sobbed once and felt the tears of blood begin to course down her face. “Merrill, it wasn’t him at all. It was a demon.”
“What? What do you mean?”
ilse coughed out a last bit of sulfur water, the stench mixed with the reek of blood and lavender. “An imp, Charnas. He — It impersonated Carl, and he...” She sobbed again, feeling chilled to the marrow despite the heat of the pool. “I trusted him.”
Merrill stood, considering, then flicked his cigarette. “Well, don’t expect any sympathy from me." He gazed coldly at her. “There was a beautiful woman who I loved once, and I trusted her as well. Unfortunately she was a fiend in human form, and she killed me and took me to Hell."
“Merrill, it wasn’t like that..."
“Really? I suppose betrayal feels different from the other end of things, but then I wouldn’t know. The Council hasn’t given me that order yet.” He took a drag from his cigarette, blowing it out through his nose in a short burst. “I should probably take a small measure of satisfaction in knowing that there’s still justice in the world, and what goes around, comes around, but call me a cynic. The best I can think is that since this is Hell, eventually everyone gets a chance to suffer."
ilse sobbed, and Merrill looked at her with contempt. At last his face softened a bit, and his eyes showed some small trace of compassion. “Oh, please, get up. I could never stand to see you cry, even that damned blood, and we’ve got to go tell Etrius. If your new boyfriend’s gone missing, and there’s a demon impersonating him, then we've all got some serious problems.”
Merrill grabbed a towel and a robe from a rack by the door, then pulled her out of the bath, thrusting the soft bathsheet into her arms. Use wanted to hug to him for comfort, but he pushed her away coldly.
Red blood ran onto the white plush of the towel in her arms. “Why are you being so cruel?”
“Why do you think?” He glared at her, the cigarette forgotten in his hand, and a bead of red began to form at the corner of one eye. “You killed me, you brought me to this, and by way of apology, you said you were sorry and swore you would love me for all eternity. And now here you are with another man, another living man, and you won’t even so much as look at me when all you have eyes for is his neck and his fresh red blood," he seethed, his fangs sliding out to their full length. His whisper was barely audible over the sound of water draining from pool to pool. “What am I supposed to think?” They stood there in silence. The cigarette burned down in his fingers and began to singe his flesh. His only reaction was to turn his head and look at it in disgust before flicking it away to land in one of the baths with a hiss and a curl of smoke. He then thrust the robe into her arms and extinguished his flaming fingers in the nearest pool.
“Save your crocodile tears for someone who hasn’t seen them, ilse.” Merrill reached into his gold cigarette case and took out a new cigarette. “I have to go warn Etrius. Duty to the Council calls.”
With a cold elegance, he leaned down to the charcoal brazier and lit his cigarette directly from the flames. Though a hideous burn wound, his fingers were already healed, and after sampling the smoke to make sure it was to his taste, he nodded to Ilse and left the room.
Ilse collapsed onto the floor, weeping into the towel.
Disheveled, blood-streaked and stinking of sulfur — it was in this state that Ilse finally got to meet with Councilor Etrius and to talk with him personally. Her tongue stuck in her mouth, and she was unable to speak, even had she known what to say.
Astrid stood in the door of the parlor, dressed in a violet gown of simple elegance, the dress she’d worn when she’d gone personally to fetch Use from the baths. In theory, it was an honor to be summoned by so powerful a member of the House; in truth, it was nothing of the sort. Astrid had marked her for her spite and had taken pains to show Use to her worst advantage.
Councilor Etrius only came in, his mismatched eyes looking so very like Paul’s that ilse wanted to weep and so very like Zho’s that she wanted to scream in terror. She did neither, shocked beyond any reaction but tears, while Astrid and Merrill watched her from each doorway, twin sentinels of spite and malice.
“You poor child," said the Councilor, the first words he had spoken to her save simple remarks in passing over coffee the night before. “Merrill has told me everything, but I must ask you to tell me yourself.” He went down on one knee before her, taking her hands in his own. Through her red film of tears, Ilse saw only his look of concern and behind him, the basilisk’s glare from Astrid. “Carl cannot be found. Tell me, if you know, what demon was it that took his form?”
ilse squeezed his hands in return, taking comfort from the familiar aura, even though she had never met the great man before. “Charnas, an imp.”
Etrius stuck out his index and least fingers, making the Cornu, a sign against evil, and turned his head. “Vdndr val-dYr wxi'Tnaerr!'' Use couldn’t understand his swearing, but it sounded like something in Swedish or Old Norse.
He looked back, taking a moment to compose his features. “I know this evil one. But your Carl is in danger, Lisle, mein Liebchen, and I must ask you to trust me, though I know you do not wish to do that after what you have just suffered at the mercies of the fiend. Please."
The request was made with his eyes, not his lips, but Ilse understood all the same. He wished access to her soul, and even though he could have easily taken it, he chose to ask.
Wordlessly she accepted, his soul as familiar as her own, even
though he had called her not Ilse, but Lisle, my darling, knowing perhaps, somehow, that her true name was Leslie. The colors of his aura were familiar and comforting, and Ilse felt him come inside, touching her spirit like a kiss, and saw, clearly, that he loved her.
The colors spun about her like a dream, and as his soul moved past to look through her memories, she had access to his. Not all, but one was offered up to her like a present, wrapped in the dusky rose of nostalgia and the pale green of yearning, worn and treasured with a thousand lifetimes of recollection, as glittery and unreal in its beauty as a fairy tale picture book kept since childhood.
Ilse touched it, and its story unfolded around her.
Unlike other mages, who took the form of hawks and eagles, or ravens and owls, when they flew over the fields of the Middle Country, she, Etrius, had taken the shape of a ringdove, a form for a mission of love and a guise for an errand of secrecy. Enemies would watch for hawks and kestrels, but none would notice a plain little bird, a messenger for nothing but love or peace. Magic was fading from the world, and the greater forms were difficult to take, tied to old power and old legends. But of the birds, the dove still had power, its symbol kept alive by the Church and by lovers, the little gray bird still thriving in this frightening new age.
She flew down, searching for the vardo of her lover, Lisle, scanning for the compass rose and the hearts, crosses and charmed pentacles that marked the roof of her gypsy cart. There, on the edge of the field of wildflowers, in the shade of a linden tree, she saw it. Sitting on the stoop of the wagon, her dirndl embroidered with the flowers of springtime and her basket filled with the herbs of power, sat Lisle, the gypsy-witch. Lisle Zho, the fortuneteller. Lisle, his love.
She was beautiful, with raven hair and sun-browned skin and startling blue eyes, but when Etrius remembered the face of his love, Ilse recognized it as her own, only the colors of the skin and hair changed. The eyes were the same.
And when she looked into Lisle’s eyes, Ilse looked into herself, Etrius' memory awakening something deep inside her, something she’d forgotten and repressed, but she didn’t know how she could have ever forgotten. The scene shifted, the fairy tale pages of treasured past glittered with turning about, seeing it from her own perspective and remembering the old and painful memories.
Lisle shivered, and from more than the chill air of morning. The herbs were too fresh and too powerful, thorn apple, henbane, aconite, monkshood and the belladonna which spoke to her with the voice of a poisonous maiden. Powerful, deadly herbs, murderous things that should not be touched except in the most desperate of times. But these were those. The birds had ceased to speak to her, the unicorn no longer visited the pond, and a cold wind blew across the fields, refusing to listen even when she entreated it in the name of Old Man Winter to stay away from her flowers.
Desperate times called for desperate measures, though she wondered what price would be too much. Hell below still had its strength, though the roads to the infernal realms were closing (thankfully, oh so thankfully), and Heaven was still there, though fewer and fewer prayers were answered. Yet the natural world, from which a white witch drew her strength, was losing its power, withering away like a tree sapped at the root, or, she hoped, perhaps just like a tree in wintertime, husbanding its strength and drawing its magic and vigor deep inside itself until spring came again. Yet here she was, the lover of a man who was prepared to risk an endless wintertime for the slim hope of an eternal spring.
The ringdove fluttered down and landed in her lap, looking in her basket and cooing softly.
She picked up the little bird, cradling it to her cheek. “Oh, Etrius, Please, do not do this thing. Let us just grow old, as is natural, and wait for to world to be green once more."
The dove cooed, looking at her with its clever black eyes, and it was a mark of the winter of the magic of the world that she could not understand a word it said, even though she was a witch and she knew it to be an enchanted sorcerer.
She reached into her basket, taking out the largest of the pods of the deadly thorn apple and split the spiky fruit open with her thumbnail, letting the grains spill into her palm, and remembering Avicenna’s charm: one for strength, two for visions, three for madness, and four for death. Lisle hoped the one would be sufficient and chose the largest of the seeds, holding it up for the ringdove. The bird gobbled it down greedily, as if starving, then pecked at its breast like the pelican, blood welling up.
The transformation came suddenly, her lover tumbling down the steps of her cart, the tiny cloak of feathers flying through the air to land in the dirt.
Etrius sat up and dusted himself off, his gray robe snagged with twigs and briars, his mismatched eyes, blue and green, laughing at himself in the way she loved. “Magic is getting messier,” he said, retrieving the ringdove’s skin and placing it inside his hood.
“Winter is coming.” Lisle slipped the rest of the thorn apple back in the basket. “It's only natural. Everything is messy in the autumn time."
He sighed, smiling up at her. “I wish my fellow coven-mates had your philosophy."
Lisle arranged the bundles of honesty and woundwort. “Meerlinda is a clever woman. I’m certain she knows this truth.”
He laughed, “She does, but Coratrix does not, and it is his experiment we must try.”
Lisle set aside her basket, going down and helping her love to his feet. “Do not do this thing, Etrius. Let Goratrix damn himself with his own folly, but leave your own soul free.” She stroked aside his dirty blond hair, dark with years spent in the cloister, and looked at his sweet boy's face. “There are things more valuable than power or even magic. Things far more precious.”
He kissed her then, sweet as sweet, but then drew away. “I know, dearest, and that is why I must do this thing. I am young, but Tremere, my master, is old, and he fears death and will face it soon in this autumn time of magic as you call it. To reclaim his youth, he must travel to Erebus and back, but he needs young hands to guide him. There are good souls among the others in my coven, but I fear that only I truly love the man.”
Lisle put her head against his chest, listening to his heartbeat and taking comfort from his strong arms. “Goratrix is a fool, and a wicked one at that. The Damned arc forbidden by ancient law. God placed His Mark upon the forehead of Caine so that no man would harm him or else suffer His Wroth.”
“Goratrix is as learned as yourself, my dear, and that is why he insisted that Meerlinda remain part of the circle. God forbade any man, but it was Meerlinda who wielded the knife and drew the blood for the elixir."
Lisle shuddered. “When will it be ready.?”
“At the full of tomorrow’s moon. I must be there to complete the circle.”
Lisle hugged herself to him, not wanting to lose him. “Then if you will not listen to my counsel, then I must ask you to promise me one thing."
“What is it, my love?”
She pressed her head against his chest. “Leave me a child. Give me a child to remember you by if you do not return and to raise with you if you do.”
He gazed at her, smiling. “We are not married, my love. It is not right."
Lisle smiled back. “You are a gadjo, dearest. I told you, my family would not approve either way.”
“Well, then, I would be happy to do the rites."
Carefully, she and Etrius laid the circle and said the rites, making love amid the flowers of the summer field, drinking the brew from the chalice and eating the seedcakes from the dish, ensuring that she would grow heavy with child and give birth in the springtime.
Etrius touched her hair. “Thank you, my love. I must go now, but if I survive the experiment, I will return in a fortnight. And then I will make you my bride and we shall raise our child together.” His eyes laughed. “No matter what our parents think."
Lisle smiled, his words a bittersweet thing. “I will not ask you to choose between your loves or to divide your loyalties. Go with the old man if you must, but return to me if you
can."
Etrius smiled, the same bittersweet pain as she felt showing in the lines around his eyes, old before their time with scholarship. He leaned forward and kissed her again, longer and more passionate, then pulled away. “I must leave, my love. Duty calls, and the old man has need of me."
“Do not go!" Lisle cried, her heart making her a traitor to her former words, but the next moment, her lover was gone.
In his place, a gray ringdove flapped in the air, cooing, then flew off for the far mountains, and Lisle cried out at her loss.
Use then remembered the rest of Lisle’s days, the bitter pain and few simple joys. Etrius did not return, but his son, Aldiis, was born, raised in the tradition of the Gypsies. Though his eyes were both green, he still had the look of his father. Lisle never saw Etrius again and at last died a cold and lonely death, poisoning herself with her own herbs, the plants now able to work no other magic.
The blackness then cleared, turning to red, the ruby on the chain about Etrius’ neck. “You left me!” Use cried. “You abandoned me and our son! You never returned, and you never died!"
“Yes, I did." Etrius looked at her with great sadness. “Surely you now know that I did. I did not return for I did not wish to visit you with the curse that my folly had brought on myself, and now, lives later, that curse has still come upon you. I am sorry.
“But there is still time to set right the great wrong that was done. There is still time for the broken promises to be kept, for life to be reclaimed, and for springtime to come again.” He touched her cheek. “Forgive me."
Use sobbed, unsure of what to say, so many feelings coursing through her.
Etrius stroked her hair. “I must go now and find what has happened to Carl. He must be kept safe, if all is to be set right."
With a sad smile, Etrius left her again, abandoning her to the mercies of Merrill and Astrid, each looking at her with their own brand of venom.
At last Astrid spoke, “You knew him before. I can respect that, even appreciate it.” She bared her fangs. “But never forget that he is mine now.”
