Delerium's Mistress: Tales of the Flat Earth Book 4

by Tanith Lee

  “This fruit—”

  “Pray excuse me.”

  “A pastry then. A spoonful of honey—”

  “Excuse me, dear lord,” said Liliu. “I have already eaten. Alone, as is my custom.”

  “How frugal,” said another guest. And another: “How charmingly bashful.”

  “Yes,” said Jadrid, smiling upon his wife, “it is true she eats elsewhere, and not with me. But tell us, gentle Liliu, what is it that you eat? The servants say they bear you dishes of food, but mostly these dishes go back untouched. Another has declared that he suspects you of throwing what food is gone to stray dogs under the house wall.”

  The guests laughed. Liliu lowered her eyes.

  “A sip of wine now, to bring some color to your pale cheeks,” said Jadrid, with vast concern. “A morsel of bread, to please me.”

  “Excuse me, I pray you,” said Liliu. “I am not hungry.” “This,” said Jadrid, “is probably a fact. For last night, I think, you ate very well.”

  Something in his voice then caused a silence in the chamber. Even the flames straightened in the lamps as if anxiously to listen. But Liliu did not raise her eyes.

  “What can you mean, Jadrid?” the merchant asked his son. “You say she does not eat with you, and then you say she has, to your knowledge, eaten well. The poor maiden will be distraught. You must not tease her so.”

  “No?” said Jadrid. “An end to the teasing then.” And now his face and voice were very terrible. “Last night, having had a warning, I followed my wife, who often, it seems, leaves my bed in the depths of the dark. I followed her by way of the tunnels under our house, out to the burial ground beyond the city wall. And there in a tomb she met with acquaintances of hers, her kindred, and together they mocked the silliness of mankind, as they tore off the breasts of dead women and devoured them. And there they drank to the inferiority of men, as they guzzled the blood and bile of corpses.”

  Horror struck the company. Not one moved, till Liliu jumped up, and rushing to the merchant, she threw herself at his feet. “Save me, my father,” she cried, “for your son has gone mad.”

  “Mad, yes, very nearly,” said Jadrid, whose face was now if anything paler than hers. “If you, my own kin and friends, doubt me, I ask you to call in the servants. Among them you will find one at least who has seen this thing I took for wife coming up at morning through the courtyard stones, to wash off the foulness of her feeding at our well.”

  Then Liliu jumped to her feet again. She turned and gazed at them all, and her beauty was gone, her face ugly and ravenous. Not one who looked on her at that moment but did not know Jadrid had been honest.

  “Oh, you, so cunning and so clever the world reels at you, oh dear husband, what will you do?”

  “Why, only this,” said Jadrid. And going straight up to her, he plunged his dagger into her heart.

  She shrieked once, and then she fell to the ground, while the candles sank low in the lamps, as if afraid to see.

  3. The Tale Continues

  EVERYONE in the house was sworn to secrecy concerning the events of that awful night. The oath was a terrific one. It was given out that Jadrid’s young spouse had died tragically and suddenly at table, by choking on a bone. (There was a gruesome humor to this of which Jadrid himself may well have been aware.) Of the other houses in the city which might have fallen prey to the company of ghouls, no heed was taken. They must look out for themselves.

  Liliu was buried next day with much pomp and lament.

  Jadrid was said to be overwhelmed by grief. He had commissioned for his beloved a special monument, and this was why she was first to be laid in a burial chamber unconnected to the family mausoleum, and on ground beyond the family plot.

  Out of respect for the family’s sorrow, the whole street where stood the merchant’s house was closed for three days and three nights.

  During this period, too, the house itself stayed shut up and its inmates indoors. It may be true that Jadrid grieved, but his misery was of a feverish, furious sort. In dreams the alarmed father heard his son cry out that he wished he might slay the foul witch a second time. Such is love.

  On the third night, some hours before dawn as the moon was sinking, Jadrid roused out of a leaden sleep.

  Waking, he knew himself still unconscious. For a nightmare crouched at the bed’s foot. It had the shape of Liliu, her perfume even, her long hair of blackest red which poured across his feet, and it leaned to the vein in his ankle and sucked the blood from it.

  Jadrid struggled, and would have shouted for help, but he was weak with horror. And even as he tried to free himself of the vile dream, the vile dream itself raised her head and smiled at him, while his blood ran from her teeth. “Be still, dearest lord,” said Liliu. And she set her hand on his chest and pushed him back. She had the strength of a giantess; he could not resist. “Why so surprised?” said Liliu. “Is it not right a wife should be by her husband in his bed? Ah, you did not think you killed me? Such flesh as I am, nothing can kill it for long, not iron, nor steel, nor stone nor bone nor water, nor fire. Did we not boast our greatness in the tomb?”

  And then she stood up, and laughing at him, became a column of spinning smoke, and this vanished into the air.

  “Then, thank the gods, it was a dream—”

  But lighting the candles, Jadrid saw, and felt, the bite in his ankle, and how it bled.

  Three mages were called to the merchant’s house. The first came with much show, and a retinue of servants. His own chair was set for him in the merchant’s hall. His page lay down under his feet to be his footstool. The robes of the first mage were sewn with orichalc, and he held a wand of gold with which he casually toyed, though lightnings seeped from its end.

  “The young man,” said the first mage, “is beset by a vampire. She is thirsty not only for blood but for revenge. She will destroy him if she can.”

  “So much we are aware of,” said the merchant.

  “I am glad to find you educated,” said the mage. He snapped his fingers. A green toad bounced into his lap and poured for him a sherbet from a flask of emerald. “The chamber where the young man sleeps,” said the first mage, “must have branches of the wild thorn tree piled at door and windows. He must be anointed with blessed oil from a temple given over to the worship of some god who is reckoned to have arisen, at least on one occasion, from the dead. (There are several of these.) If the vampire is still able to manifest, he must recite a mantra, which I will teach him.”

  Things were performed as the first mage directed. Wild thorn brought from the country and laid at the thresholds, sacred oil smeared on Jadrid’s body. He lay awake through the first and second hours of darkness, but in the third hour slumbered exhaustedly. He woke to find the devil-woman seated at his bed foot, biting at his ankle. Then Jadrid exclaimed at her the mantra the first mage had instructed him in.

  Liliu raised her head.

  “Not iron nor steel, stone nor bone, water nor fire. Not scratchy thorns not sticky oil. Not words,” said Liliu. And before he could stop her, she raked him across the breast with her long and pointed nails, and thrusting him down began to lap his lifeblood like a famished rat.

  At this Jadrid let out a cry so loud the house seemed shaken, and the merchant’s armed guards, waiting in the passage, rushed into the room. But Liliu sneered at their swords and spears. She began to spin, she became smoke, then air. She was gone.

  The second mage came in black and was cowled in black. He wore a mask of thin wood that revealed only his eyes, and these not well. He groveled to his gods constantly, to show them he remembered them. He groveled also to the merchant.

  “If you will allow this wretched person to advise you, exalted sir, the efficacy of which advice is only valuable in that it was obtained by study of holy lore, then you will do this . . .” And his treatment was as follows. The young man must fast that day, and bathe seven times in the coldest water. An hour before sunfall he must have arrived at the segregated unrestin
g-place of his late wife, with what helpers he had selected, who must also have fasted and bathed seven times in cold water. Going into the tomb, they should wait by the bier until the sun was almost down, then snatch off the grave coverings. Ignoring the dead woman’s appearance of healthy life, her opening eyes, or any pleading she might make, her husband must then lop off her head, cut out her heart and set fire to it, and to the rest of the cadaver, separately.

  “But she has told me,” said Jadrid, “iron, steel, fire—such things cannot harm her.”

  “Where is your faith?” said the mage. “My gods know all.”

  Jadrid was not convinced, but he was desperate, and so obeyed in everything, even to the seven baths.

  Just before sunset, disguised as priests, he and his band of retainers entered the small dilapidated tomb where Liliu had been laid.

  As the sun began to sink, they approached the bier and snatched off the coverings from the body—finding only what they had expected, that she was firm and fresh, with every appearance of voluptuous life.

  If Jadrid was disposed to hesitate was not recorded. Undoubtedly Liliu opened her eyes and glowered at him. In that instant, he smote off her head, and next went on with the rest of the procedure. When a torch was set to the remains, it seemed a jeering female laugh rang around the tomb.

  As they paced back to the merchant’s house, it occurred to each of the men, and to Jadrid, that something walked behind. They entered the house and barred its doors. Jadrid and his father then kept vigil, with all the guards and the male servants standing by with drawn sword or heavy stave. The black-robed priest knelt in a corner, praying and scourging himself.

  Presently there was a dreadful crash—it was the outer door being flung wide. After this the door of the chamber flew open and in came a smother of swirling ashes which spun and roiled and laughed. And became Liliu. She was entirely whole, not bearing any mark to show where she had been so frequently and mortally smitten.

  “Not iron or steel, stone or bone, thorn or oil or words, not the sword, not the torch, not aesthetics, rituals, traditions, faith, prayer can rid you of me, dear husband,” said Liliu. “I love you so well I will drain you dry. Not tonight, for you are not private enough, but tomorrow I will come to you. No man set to guard you shall I spare. One scratch of my nails shall be fatal to them. Defend yourself as you will, you cannot deny me. I will have your blood, I will have the marrow of your bones. Look forward to our meeting, sweet lord. For now, a token—only this—” And suddenly she flew at Jadrid and bit from his hand the first finger, and vanished with it into nothingness.

  “The gods help me, I am damned!” cried Jadrid. And taking his own sword would have slain himself at once, had his father and the servants not prevented it by force.

  Soon afterward, the second mage was thrown from the house, and, at dawn, the third mage invited in.

  This third mage was plainly dressed, neither flamboyant nor obscure in his bearing. He looked at Jadrid and said to him, “Do not yet despair.” Then he sat down with father and son and discussed matters as though debating on the price of grain. Finally the mage spoke to them, in this way.

  “I regret yours is not the only house in the city to be plagued by this confederacy of devilkind. Nevertheless, in this fashion, something has been learned of them. It is true they are an old and, in their own lights, estimable race. They despise man, but must now and then have recourse to him. In the beginning, they believe, their race and man’s were one, and man still carries certain of their tastes which he has suppressed from an egomaniacal squeamishness, and refuses to eat, in certain parts, even the flesh of pigs, since it is said to resemble that of men. And so he has lost, they say, his strength, but remains fatally attracted to their kind, which, when necessary, they exploit. He has, too, abilities which they, for all their superior talents, have not. She who named herself to you Liliu is, like all her clan, impervious to violence. Her body being always partially etheric, it can never properly be dissipated by any physical means. To strike her with blade, even to burn her—these strategies only strengthen her, for it is practice in reintegration which makes such a creature perfect in the art of rebirth.”

  “Then I am lost,” said Jadrid.

  “Not so,” said the mage. “If you will be resolute but one further time, you may gain such power over her she will cease to annoy you.”

  “By what means?” cried Jadrid with understandable urgency.

  “Listen well to me,” said the third mage. “There is on the earth no mortal thing that does not have a shadow. The making of such a shadow is only this, that a solid object impedes the path of light. Now, there are some beings, too, which may pass as mortal, until it is seen that, as they are discorporate, light shines quite through them and they have no shadow at all.”

  “Liliu?”

  “Not Liliu, for would you not have been wary from the first if she had had no shadow? Shadows Liliu’s kind do have, but they are not of the nature of the human shadow. The human body is flesh, but the body of one of Liliu’s kind is partly nonfleshly. Just so the shadow, which in the human is no more than darkened air, in the vampire is partly corporate. Where light strikes them, it does somewhat pass through, and so forces various particles also through into the substance of the shadow. Why else, do you imagine, does this race so fear the blast of the sun, who is the king of all lights?”

  “Then?” asked Jadrid.

  “Tonight, do not go to your bed. Stand ready in the chamber. Let her appear, as she will, but be sure there is a bright lamp burning and a knife hidden to hand. Cajole her, then, and promise her rewards, and beg her on your knees—for her people love flattery and terror in equal measure. But all this while, manage it that the light shines upon her and so her shadow is cast out. Then suddenly run to the shadow and slash through it till as much as may be is separated from her. For from her it can be ripped, and it will bleed and she will scream and set on you—but you must resist and tear the shadow free. Now, when you burned her, it was into the shadow that all her atoms fled, but since her flesh is whole, you will have divided, at the first stroke, those atoms. And from that first stroke she will grow weaker, and at the last will fall to entreating you as you had entreated her, promising you all manner of riches and miracles. You will naturally pay no heed. But take the shadow, which you will find limp, skinny, and slimy to the touch, and thrust it in some bag or jar, which you must then tightly seal. Neither air nor light must get in. Keep it so only a few moments, away from her proximity, and the shadow will wither to a harmless husk. And as for she herself, as you will learn, she will have lost all her power.”

  “And may I kill her then?” asked Jadrid, with blazing eyes.

  “Her kind do not die easily,” said the third mage, “but you will find her docile and much altered, unable to perform against you anything. Imprison her or drive her out, as you will.”

  The day blossomed, faded, fell. The night returned, and Jadrid stood ready in his chamber, all alone, one bright lamp burning, and a knife hidden in the cushions of the bed.

  He paced up and down, up and down, from the last red drop of sunset, until the windows were black as if the whole city lay inside a tomb. Then there came a fluttering in the midst of the floor, like feathers, then a spiraling like a pillar of dust. And then there stood Liliu.

  “Beloved,” said Jadrid instantly, “I know you are here to kill me. Have you not vowed it?”

  “Just so,” said Liliu, and raised her claws.

  “Give me then,” said Jadrid, “a few moments’ grace to make to you some act of contrition.”

  “Your blood and split bones will satisfy me,” said Liliu, but she had paused.

  “Let me speak; I will be brief,” said Jadrid. “Let me tell you, beloved, that my fear has gone from me. I am in a sort of ecstasy that makes me glad to die at your hands. I have loved you with such passion, I would not desire to die in any other way. That I tried to betray you first, and then to destroy you—these were foolish ch
ildish deeds, to which others bent me. I had a secret faith besides that you, being of a kingly race, could not succumb. Yet forgive such transgressions. If my agony will please you, take it. Your beauty is beyond all beauty in the world. To have drunk such wine, from such a cup, I have been fortunate as it is given to few men to be. Better to have been your lover a month and perish, than to lie whole centuries with mortal women who are dross.”

  Now this had its effect. The devil-folk of the ghouls had a further weakness—it thought itself unsurpassable, and so was swiftly able to credit others might think so too.

  “For these words,” said Liliu, “I will cause your pain to be a little less.”

  “No,” said Jadrid. “My pain is my last gift of love to you. Take as much of it as you wish, and spare me nothing. For to serve you, my goddess, is my only longing.” And then he beckoned her toward the bed, and Liliu came to him, and as she did so the lamp shone on her and her shadow was flung across the covers, clear and blue.

  Out then he swept the hidden knife, and with it he slashed at the shadow—and it frayed and tore like ruptured silk, and glittering transparent ichor fountained up. And the devil-woman screamed. She shrieked and threw herself upon Jadrid, and scratched and bit at him, but her strength was not as it had been—

  And then all the clinging threads of the shadow were cut away, and Jadrid seized it and rolled up the slimy thing, which was no thicker than a roll of seaweed, and sprang with it from the bed, leaving Liliu sprawled there. And when she lifted herself, only a few vague wisps of shadow lingered, reflected on the wall.

  “Oh my husband, pity me. Pity me,” said Liliu, “and I will bring you great treasure—”

  “Yes, you are not so cunning with your enticements as I, it would seem,” said Jadrid bitterly.

  “I will make you a king,” wailed Liliu. “I will love you always.”

  “You are stupid now as well as filthy,” said Jadrid, and he plunged the crumpled rag of severed shadow into a leather sack, and tied the sack’s neck. And when Liliu came creeping toward him, he kicked her away.