Tanith By Choice: The Best of Tanith Lee

by Tanith Lee

  Idrel steps on to the road of ice. Dimly, a reflection tapers from under her feet, and also there are objects caught there, mostly abstractions, though she begins to fancy statuary or frozen people are trapped in the glass coffin of it.

  In a brief while, she perceives herself to have come in, almost unawares of the sameness of the snow, to a colossal ruin, maybe of a city. Tiles and parts of walls, doorways, roof-beams, arches, the skeletons of windows, have stolen round her, and high above a briary of knife-like of cruel towers hangs abandoned in heaven.

  The sight of this abnormal edifice, or what there is left of it, causes Idrel, lost and alone, to question for the first time where she has come from, and who she is, and why she has travelled to such a place.

  After an appreciable time, she mutters aloud, ‘I shall remember, soon.’

  And then she goes on, walking through the eroded architecture, down into dark avenues where pillars have collapsed and become static rollers of snow, and up stairways innumerable to her. And on her journey she passes only once something which touches her poignantly. This is an enormous flower, proportionally of stone but mostly of opaque, bluish ice. The shape of the flower is a rose, but this the lost girl fails to ascertain. Perhaps she never saw a rose before, in whatever spot she has come from.

  At last – the sky is stained with a more foreboding twilight – the girl Idrel reaches a wide platform against a door which seems to be of iron. Icicles drip down it, with edges that are like razors. She is afraid to put her hand to the door.

  She sits before it. Night now must find her here.

  The desire to sleep returns, and there in the leaden sunset she shuts her eyes and knows no more.

  The King (the Queen’s First Sin)

  It was not true, she had not been a slut of the kitchen, not even a scullery maid, Innocin – but neither had she been called, then, Innocin.

  On a day in late spring, returning from a hunt, the King had passed across the rough meadows below the Palace. A few good houses stood about, with formal small gardens, and orchards. But on the meadowland the first poppies were blooming, and a girl was there, plucking them like the strings of the day-harp, gathering armfuls of fire. Her hair was like a soft fire, also, but not much in evidence, scraped back from her yellow-white face and confined in a long rat’s tail of braid.

  She was dressed like a servant and doubtless that was what she was.

  The King, having glanced at her – attention caught by the blot of red among the redness of the poppies – rode on. Half a mile further, he reined in. He called someone, his steward, or some aristocratic companion. ‘I spied a damsel in that last field. Have her got.’

  This King had whims, now and then, and his court was not unaccustomed to them. An envoy was sent – but the girl had vanished from the meadow, perhaps frightened away by her vision of loud horsemen and the carcasses of deer.

  He went back behind the great iron doors of his house, the King. He brooded. He was used to getting that which he chose to want. A dark man, big and bear-like, he began to think of delicate things, waist-chains of slender gold, satin stockings, tortoise-shell combs which, taken forth, let fall a light flood of hair . . .

  Another whim came over him, and inside two days he had had made a slim dress of poppy-red velvet, and red-gold slippers with buckles printed by rubies. He had judged her measures; for the footwear, if it did not fit, he supposed she would make the best of things, the shoes being what they were.

  He had the garments transported around the peripheries of the Palace, and out to the marble houses on the meadows. He did not go so far as to accompany the party in disguise. His only instruction was: ‘Red hair, white face. And if these bits go on to her, then you have the proper animal.’

  But the hunt did not turn up anything of the right looks, let alone the correct build to fill garments and slippers.

  The King began to fret. He was not used to this, to not getting his way.

  They said afterwards the management of temporal affairs suffered at that time, but in fact, by now, the King was no longer necessary in the manner of a ruler. The direction of such lands as were postulated to be his was under the sway of councils, assemblies and ministers. What matter if a scatter of minor papers went unsigned, or a town or two was spared a royal progress?

  Months presented themselves and were spent.

  Came a morning, sportively pretending to simplicity the King went out, on foot, with ten men and some dogs. He had almost forgotten the girl among the poppies, she was fading from him as the flowers had already had the grace to do. He would refer to how he had been cheated, occasionally, since he had stubbornly retained his dissatisfaction, the whiff of baulked romance, lose his temper then, or frown and call for music. This daybreak, it was quite out of his head.

  There was a mist, mild and sweet, and in the mist suddenly he saw the girl, walking along, russet-cloaked, a basket on her arm.

  She was going towards the ornamental woods out of which, further down, the King and his company had just emerged. In the mist, she seemed not to note eleven hunters and seven dogs. Perhaps her eyesight was poor, as others came later to believe.

  Because she was slipping away into the shadows of the forest, the King motioned his men to silent stasis. He alone went back into the wood after her.

  She had committed a kind of heresy against him. She had kept him waiting, and worse, vexed. He felt an entitlement now to do what he liked, although he would have done what he liked in any event.

  The Blonde Dwarfess (the Beast in the Wood)

  Heracty has been told that the flaxen dwarfess once had an adventure in the mock forest below the Palace.

  He does not know whether to credit this. She herself has never told him anything of it, though she is far from reticent.

  Apparently, she had gone down the floral steppes, and wandered, astray, among the trees. She was gathering flowers, and carried a basket. But she wore courtly finery, and a scarlet snood sewn with brilliants, a gift of the Prince’s. No one had warned her of the clockwork animals in the forest. Or, if they ever had, she misunderstood. She had left her maid, a canny brat of six years, behind.

  When something howled, the dwarfess took the noise for that of one of the Prince’s hounds, which were sometimes exercised in a large enclosure at the other side of the steppes. It was a still afternoon, and sounds might travel.

  Then, as she bent towards a clump of pale hyacinths, the dwarfess saw, in the midst of a bush, two narrow, gleaming and carnivorous eyes.

  Next moment, a grey wolf slunk from the thicket.

  The dwarfess curtsied to the wolf. Though she had not been informed, or had unremembered, clockwork, the etiquette of the Palace was by now ingrained in her. And at her curtsy, indeed, the wolf smiled, and prancing forward, capered all about her with expressions of amiability, so she was not in the least alarmed at it.

  Presently the two walked on together. The wolf was helpful, nosing out for her absolute treasuries of flowers, aiding her in uprooting them. The dwarfess became fond of the smiling wolf, and on impulse placed her hand on his grey head.

  No sooner had she done so than the wolf sprang and dashed her full-length on the ground. That done, it jumped on her, muddying her skirts and tearing them with its claws. It gave off bear-like roars, drooled and licked her, and sometimes bit her with excitement. Though these toothings were no more dangerous than the nips of an eager puppy, the lady in her terror imagined herself about to be devoured, eaten alive. She fainted.

  On reviving, she found the wolf stretched heavily across her, using her pliant body and hair for a couch, fast asleep or certainly in the attitude of one grossly sleeping.

  Not until the wolf awoke did she dare to stir. To her amazed relief, at her first cautious movement the beast quickly leapt away from her and darted into the forest.

  The dwarfess, weeping, gathered up her slobbered skirts, and abandoning the spilled, crushed flowers, limped home.

  At length, the gruesome tale
was whispered to her consoeur, who pertly replied, ‘Why, you should have thrown the brute an apple or a sweetmeat. That’s all it wants.’

  But the blonde dwarfess wished aloud, or so it was reported, that men might go and axe down the dreadful wood.

  The Priest’s Darkness (the Beauty)

  Comfortless, the vampire dreams, while that which passes for its soul, a beast, lies snarling on the snow, pinned by hafts and staves. The cold is like a wound, felt all through the tangled blackness of the pelt, through to the scald of the blood, and snow burns on the lashes of the fiery eyes, which are not composed of pure ferocity but of questions, and lit by bewildered distress and pain. It cannot comprehend, this thing, why it has been pursued, brought down, is tortured now, solely for being, for living as what it is.

  The speech of the hunters is a blur of successful hatred and successful fear. They are recalling an idiot, tender of a midden, whom in error they did to death for these crimes. Yet here is the culprit, caught in the act, the milk-white lamb in its jaws –

  ‘But the other shape –!’ one cries out now, frantic.

  ‘That perishes too. See – what’s done here, we’ll go back and search the houses to find.’

  ‘Somewhere the devil will be weltered in his own blood.’

  They laugh. It is a laugh of utter fright.

  And the black wolf writhes, grinning, also afraid.

  Until it beholds an axe, glinting silver in the torchlight, the rays struck upward from the fevered snow, an axe of silver iron raised over all their heads.

  The axe flashes and crashes down.

  He experiences the impact, the blow, and starts up choking, blind and maddened, calling out to God, in the turmoil of a hard, thin bed.

  But he is not killed, can breathe and see. And if he shouted aloud, beyond the walls his frozen village lies submissive enough, under the sterile quarter moon.

  He has had this dream before, the priest. This dream, others. Once he would dream always that he led them, his flock, over the cliff of night into a valley of shadow, and there, as they entered the defile, he, the shepherd, seized them and sank his fangs into their throats. His dark priestly robe is a black pelt. He puts it on. Beware of me, he whispers, setting the wafer between their lips, giving them their sip of God’s blood, as he aches for the beauty of their wine. He stalks them and can pull them down with pitiable ease. He has had so many. Is it only hundreds?

  Now he sobs, kneeling before the window, which has no glass, only a broken shutter. There are no riches here. Only the love of God and the blessing of the Devil.

  What is to be done?

  He looks round wildly, but there is nothing to hand. Even the razor for shaving is blunt in its dish.

  Besides, it is just an evil dream. Of course, he is so tired. This terrible place, when he had once thought of lofty cathedrals, of purity, dedication, and bliss.

  The priest lies down again on the bony bed. He stares with open eyes at the beams in the roof, and disciplines himself to think of . . . beauty.

  Now he stares with open, inner eyes. He sees an altar-cloth, a white dove ascending on gold; this becomes a window in a church which touches the sky. But then it is a white girl painted against flames, and in her hands is a poisoned apple, like red flesh, which she throws to him. There is the choice, to catch the apple, to allow it to go by. If it does so, another will catch it. The apple fills his hand. He senses its fragrance. He longs to shut his inner eyes, but to do so must open again the outer ones. The moon is in the window now. His lids are wet. He is ashamed.

  Beauty in the Palace (the Vampire’s Dream)

  Somehow, perhaps by magic, the door has been opened. Icicles lie around Idrel on her platform. Within the doorway, a stair mounts into darkness. This is not inviting, yet seemingly it is an invitation, as sure as if a dark figure waited at the darkness’ heart, calmly beckoning. Getting to her feet, the girl enters the doorway and climbs the stair.

  The ruin is intent with strangeness, and the loud silence of snow and settled night.

  Far beneath, in the blue ice-rose of a paralysed fountain, a mermaid had been trapped. Or, possibly, only drawn there with a dagger. And here, all at once, there are candelabra, with snow or wax heaped down their stems, but in their cups flames are beginning to burn up, like blossoms breaking too soon.

  And then Idrel emerges high on the mountain of the wrecked enormous edifice, among its circlet of thorny towers. She is in a great hall, which has no roof and into which the towers seem to be gazing from huge eyes of dimly tinted glass. On the roofless walls hang lamps. As Idrel looks at them, they are being ignited, two or three at a time, by invisible tapers carried in unseen hands.

  A cavern of pillared hearth has already flowered into fire. Instinctively, the young girl goes to it and stretches out her arms, flexes her fingers. The fire gives off heat. It warms her. It shows the crimson under her skin. Behind a curtain she finds a little closed chamber of some opulence, nested there in the ruin, and prepared for her, obviously for her.

  A bath stands on silver feet, and from it rises scented steam, and a silver-framed table of vanities, mirrors, cosmetics, curling-tongs, and with jewellery littered about as if a princess had only just got up from it. Tall chests will offer her clothing. The unseen invisibles are pulling wide all the drawers and doors and trays, to demonstrate. While under its canopy, a bed has been aired with hot stones. It is a broad couch, the virgin notices, a marriage-bed, such as her foster parents shared. She senses, without nervousness or embarrassment, that someone may be watching her.

  Idrel allows the sprites of the ruin to remove the shift of her village burial, steps into the soothing bath, and is laved so gently with unguents and water she cannot for an instant misinterpret the supernatural familiarities as anything human. She is made, and becomes, a beauty.

  As she eats the dainty supper they have laid for her, the girl accepts the solution of her prior death, for this must be heaven and she is receiving her reward. As to the means of death, she cannot conjure any.

  She inhabited one world, and now is here. She does not insult her condition by thinking she is dreaming. Perhaps, however, she is part of the dream of another.

  That in mind, she ponders her pale hand with its new cuff of black, over both of which a coil of her hair has poured itself, in the firelight hectically coloured. A dramatic concoction for herself or any watcher: Black as ebony, red as blood, white as snow.

  The Queen’s Second Sin (the Dead King)

  After he was done with her, the King lumbered to his feet, regarded her, and made as if to help her in turn to rise. Tumbled, her very downfall appealed to and enticed him. Provisions from her basket – she had been taking loaves and cakes to someone, somewhere – lay all over the turf. Candied cherries had bruised on her gown. Cherries, fulvous hair, maiden blood, a foam of petticoats. He was pleased by the artistic chaos he had created from her.

  But she seemed to have lost her memory. He found that out when he had dragged her up. She had forgotten where she was going, where she had come from, even who she was. Her very name. He took it for a gambit, and guffawed. ‘But you know who I am?’ She thought, and shook her fragile head. ‘Your King,’ he told, her, not without pride. She looked at him in complete belief and pure uninterest. He felt then he could not leave such a simpleton at large. He would have her at home a day or so more. He ate her pastries like a hearty ploughboy as they went, having summoned the abortive hunt with a yell. They had only been waiting out of sight. ‘A fine quarry, eh?’ said the King, jostling his lackwit doll.

  In the Palace, he soon grew used to her amnesia. It was rather novel. He gave her things instead, rooms, clothes. Even the dress and shoes he had bandied about. The slippers were in fact too small, and did not fit.

  He had had a royal wife, once, who produced a viperish son, now being tutored, as was the vogue, elsewhere. The queen-mother next contracted a fatal plague during a pilgrimage she insisted on making, so it served her right. For himself t
he King did not foresee an era when he too, poisoned more slowly by various indulgences, would be gone, becoming in popular parlance ‘Dead’.

  What began as a clumsy snatch in a wood progressed to a merry hole-in-corner adventure, involving the game of secret passages and similar artifice.

  Eventually, by accident, the King learned who it was probable he had abducted. An elderly aristocrat, living in a remote nook of the Palace grounds, which were considerable even in those days, had lost a child, a young, not quite legitimate daughter, fifteen years of age. It was suggested jealous older sisters of less beauty, the product of another union, had got rid of her. The description of the lost girl tallied sufficiently with that of the amnesiac now haunting the apartment of the King’s favourite doxy.

  Certain gifts were instigated. Vows of unspeaking were fashioned. The lady, garbed in her autumnal camouflage, was brought out and discovered to be, first, a duchess, and next, a queen. The ulcerous foot, and some other heralding ailments, had by now taken charge of the King. Virtue did not alleviate them.

  Something else atrocious had meanwhile happened.

  The Red Queen had ceased to be a girl, was not fifteen, not seventeen, not twenty, not thirty, any longer. Flourished in the harsh illumination of the public court, far from her shady room and fireglims, she revealed her decay into a woman.

  There was a story she had conceived but not borne to term. If one had asked this Queen, to her face, she would not have dissembled, for she did not seem to know, even now, anything valid about herself.

  She could not truly be said to know, even, what she might be assumed to have realised – that she had been leapt on and vampirised, buried, dug out, thrust into the violent glare of an empty mirror which leered at, and insolently answered her, saying, Now you are old.

  The King’s bleared eyes, certainly, saw the etching of her bleak, icy face, as if it had been drawn on by a nail. It was unforgivable of her.