Tanith By Choice: The Best of Tanith Lee

by Tanith Lee

  Having left her carriage, Veranilla entered the palace by a discreet way which led through charming gardens. In the vestibule she made her arrival known to a chamberlain, and was presently installed in a nice supper-room. Here she dined, as on her previous two visits, alone with the Governor.

  She always found the Governor, the most powerful man in the city aside from the Bishop (whom she had also accommodated on several occasions), quite affable company. Descended from a mercantile family, the Governor was respectful of all the creative trades, including in his favour both artists and prostitutes. “But how I wish Heaven would spare me,” he told her, as they reached the stage of sweets and fruit, “these bloody writers! Are they all quite mad? I don’t refer to our popular playwrights, who so please the people – naturally not – nor those that work for the opera. But these others, the ones who wish only to entertain themselves with inept over-purpled gibberish, and may take seventeen stanzas of dross to reach some paltry climax – worthy only of putting on in a wine-shop latrine!”

  The Governor did not once mention the plague. Let alone any plebeian chatter of a supernatural night-beast. The Governor, Veranilla suspected, did not even privately believe in the Supreme Being, but frequently alluded to the present age as an enlightened one. Men should, the Governor averred, have by now outgrown silly fancies.

  That evening the sunset was prolonged and vivid and, just before the Governor went through into his bedroom, he and she paused to admire the crimsoning sky through a window of fine glass. Many small birds were flying over the garden trees, looking like swarms of bees against the red dusk, and Veranilla stayed to watch them, while the Governor stepped into the other room. Here he preferred to undress first and climb into the bed, sitting to observe as Veranilla took off her clothes. He left the door partly ajar, however, as normal. And so she heard at once when he let out a sudden wavering cry of what sounded like extreme terror.

  Despite the relative reasonableness of her life so far, Veranilla had also been trained to be cautious.

  She therefore turned from the window and walked softly in her satin shoes to the barely open door. Here she looked cautiously around its panelling and into the chamber beyond.

  It too possessed long windows, and was filled by a deep wine-red brilliance. By this the young woman saw all, very clearly.

  The Governor stood bolt upright by the bed, still in his shirt and breeches. He was transfixed. As well he might be. For there, in the middle of the floor, a million streaming jet-black rnuscular filaments circled and poured upward. They had come from nowhere, Veranilla surmised – for even as she stared, more and more of them evolved, apparently from nothing, to thicken and entwine the bristling mass already writhing on the tiles. It reminded her instantly of something: a sea-monster she had as a child once been shown, in a tank during carnival. Yet this apparition was the nastier, and much larger too. And all the while it swelled, rose upward, grew.

  Veranilla did not scream. Nor did she remonstrate, not even calling out to the plainly panic-stricken Governor. His face was a study in insane horror. Hers in iron self-control.

  All this time the fiery light, rather than dim, had intensified – as if the sun, just now down under the earth’s edge, had exploded there like gunpowder.

  Accordingly the Courtesan Veranilla was in no doubt when, from the tumult of thrashing thorny tentacles, a form began to consolidate itself. This form, not of a man, was of a creature. A creature like a black worm; with a black unspecified torso – less human than resembling the thorax of a giant insect. And from that came out the death-white arms and skinny hands and neck like a fungus stem and face like a mask, everything caught in a whirl of viper-like hairs, and other extended fringes, these all a liquid, poisonous black.

  Just then the creature turned its head. Its flattish plate-like mask demonstrated a fixation with the casement. In this position also Veranilla was able to note the ink-pool of a single eye, the gleaming black lips and pointed tongue, the fangs. She was ready to hide herself more thoroughly should the obscene head turn further in her direction, but instead the creature’s interest was, for that second, only in the window. Or rather, in the last flights of the birds beyond, as they went singing and settling to their roosts. She was to say later that she sensed a terrible hatred the creature had for these innocent birds. As if it resented their careless song and ability to fly. And Veranilla was glad that, being a monster of darkness, it might not manifest earlier in the day – and certainly not in the open sunset – to snatch any of them. Men though were to be snared both day and night.

  At the hour, she nevertheless forgot about the birds, for next moment the Vampire (it was now to prove its title) sprang and dazzled through the air straight upon the Governor. Trapped in the thorns and tines, immediately borne to the ground beneath it, the Governor was able only to let out one deep, loud scream. Before the Vampire silenced him.

  Veranilla had seen certain unpalatable events. But this surpassed them all.

  At the theatrical maelstrom of ripped flesh and other bodily fragments, lit by sprays of scarlet that rivalled and then outshone the dying light, she did not look very long. In a minute, noiseless as a ghost herself, she fled through the outer room and into the corridor beyond.

  As she had thought, the Governor’s guards were seated some way off, playing cards. Any outcries they might have heard they would have put down to sensual transports, for the Governor had been inclined to voice his joys. No more, Veranilla believed. She knew but too well both guards must witness, as she had done, the awful scene in the bedroom. Or might she herself not be suspect? Might she still be, even should any think she had wrought the act through evil magic?

  4

  The apartment where the scholar now lived lay two-thirds below the level of the street. Part of an old cellar, it had stayed cold, damp, fusty, dark, and redolent of wines long since drunk. A small hole provided a sort of window, but it was above Olvero’s head. Along with admitting grudging daylight, the hole enabled rubbish sometimes to be kicked or pushed through into the cell, out of sheer malice.

  In other areas of this establishment persons made raucous noise at all and any hour. That would have disturbed Olvero, had he had the inspiration to work. But he had none, let alone the means; paper, ink were gone. To get any money at all now he must carry out menial tasks, such as the porting of night-soil. He was unskilled in any craft save writing. He had in fact supposed at first he might be employed penning letters or other stuff for those unable to write at all. But obviously, as a general rule, those who could not write or read had acquaintances similarly unequipped. The one oaf who hired Olevro, to construct a note to a creditor, refused to pay until said creditor ceased his harrying. Worse, when the creditor read the note and continued merciless, the oaf returned and attacked Olvero. (Curiously, the oaf was discovered dead of the blood-draining plague only a night or so after.)

  The scholar anyway had lost not only the knack for writing, but for living. He sat in his cellar-cell most of the time brooding on his ill-fortune. From the beginning, he had put down his sight of a Vampire rising from its written name as a dream or hallucination, brought on by anger and despair. That the paper had been made soggy and broken up in shreds the scholar attributed to some spillage, or to rain or dew somehow seeping through the unopened window of his former room.

  The scholar did not believe in vampires.

  Even when he heard the stories and affright from the lower city, the tally of ‘vampiric’ murders, Olvero dismissed them. He was a man of an Enlightened Era – if ironically too a genius persecuted by the lightless ignorance of fools. What could be more perfect in the cruel balance of existence?

  He had been going on in this manner for a couple of months. A chill fall had meanwhile entered the city, hennaing the trees prior to shearing them, hanging early icicles from roofs, to provoke winter against the talented amateurism of autumn.

  Olvero woke one morning with the foul taste of hunger in his mouth, and drank some
stagnant water that did not relieve it.

  When fists thundered on the door, he recalled the last landlord, who had demanded rent then slung him in the street. But the cell was in a ruin, it was free. The scholar thought those who knocked might, if left alone, depart.

  But soon the door was broken down. Several of the Governor’s soldiers came in.

  “We have been searching for you,” said one, with a grimace.

  A wild hope gripped the scholar. He gaped at the men and half-remembered some tale he had heard a while before – when was that? – that the Governor had fallen sick. Could it be illness had slashed the veil from the Governor’s eyes? The man now grasped that Olvero was a god-gifted writer, and so had sent to find and raise him from the mud to gold and glory?

  Foolishly perhaps then, Olvero did not question the soldiers. Yet probably in any case it would not have mattered.

  Olvero’s dungeon cell was not so different from the cellar.

  In fact it had certain superiorities. For example, the window could be looked through despite the bars. It afforded a glimpse of sky now and then blue. Nor was it accessible from the public road. Besides, food was provided and, if hardly tempting to a connoisseur, at least it was, fairly regularly, there. The water was no dirtier or more unhealthy than that available at the cellar.

  Wretchedly Olvero told himself that, once freed (obviously, his imprisonment was an error), he would have much material to use in some future ode, epic or saga. Secretly he did not think he would ever be able to use it, however. His genius had died within him. Either that, or the gods had withdrawn their gift from him.

  Eventually he was taken out and, to his dreary, added horror, chained. Up into an elegant cold room he was dragged. A great many officials and men of the Governor’s court sat about, also priests in their own finery, each of whom glared at him with concentrated attention. The Governor himself was not present.

  Olvero had no means of deducing that the Governor was dead – had been stone-dead indeed, from the first smiting of the Vampire. Few in the city had learned this. Only the Governor’s immediate circle, his council, the Bishop, seven priests, three or four soldiers, and one woman knew. The murder was concealed, and the rumour of the Governor’s sickness substituted, in order that the crime’s perpetrator might not escape. Nevertheless, it took some while for any to find him. Since Olvero (for by then the perpetrator was known to be himself) had vanished from his accustomed lodging. The soldiers who next hunted for him, arrested and jailed him, had been given beforehand special safeguards from the Bishop. They had not known why. Nor luckily that, if put to the test, they would have been no use at all.

  But Olvero the Scholar was not privy to any of this, either.

  Now he stared about, blinking at the brightness of the room. And an official stood up and began to pronounce.

  “Sirs, your Grace, my lord the Bishop, here then the felon is before us. In broad day, when alone we are secure from the vile beast he has conjured. Some thirty-seven significant persons of the city have by now perished through his midnight acts, and God knows how many of the lower orders, who inevitably have gone uncounted.”

  At this Olvero glanced around, wondering – a felon? – to whom they referred. Then it came to him that they meant none other than he. The scholar laughed bitterly, just as he had when the Governor had publically reviled him those months before.

  “Hark,” exclaimed the official, “he jeers at us, he is so certain of Satan’s care of him. Come, let us get on. Bring in the woman Veranilla.”

  Then the doors were undone and the courtesan entered. Olvero gazed at her without much comprehension; though she was beautiful, she reminded him of no woman he had ever met.

  Veranilla wore mourning, however, and seeing it Olvero came to realise quite abruptly that all save the priests did so. Therefore he was not very startled at the official’s next words: “Now, Veranilla, inform us, if you will, of what occurred on the evening of the Governor’s death.”

  The courtesan remained respectfully subdued, cool and self-possessed. As with much of what she did, she had rehearsed herself carefully in this monologue. She was blameless, and meant to be found so. Olvero, undeniably the culprit, must suffer solo for his disgusting deeds.

  After a moment she spoke.

  She explained that she had been visiting the Governor on an occasion of business, for he had graciously consented to offer her advice about a mercantile venture. (This, it went without saying, was a politeness, for only a mere handful were not aware of the true nature of their transaction. There would be other little politenesses and euphemisms in her account. Some to uphold decorum. Others, more personal to herself, were employed to make sure that she appeared quite beyond reproach.)

  Veranilla told them how the Governor had gone into an adjoining room to fetch a book he wished to refer to. Presently she heard an awful cry. Rushing to the door she saw the Vampire already evolved from nothing – for there was no way in at all, the outer door and all the windows shut. More, it had already felled the Governor, slain him, and was busy ripping him wide open with its long white nails and teeth, and lashes of its black, whip-like tentacles of hair. Even the inky pointed tongue, Veranilla vowed (with the most sensitive yet couth shudder), sliced the flesh like a knife. Blood flew everywhere. They might have seen it – most of those present had – sprayed about the walls of the bedroom, as if the ghastly crimson sunset had permanently stained them. The Vampire by then guzzled amid the carnage on the Governor’s wounds. Powerless to help the poor dead gentleman, yet herself unnoted by the creature, Veranilla had run to fetch the guard. Thereafter the three of them witnessed the final horror.

  The courtesan was at pains to stress that the Vampire had also the skill of beglamouring bystanders with a sort of deathly trance. It was because of that no other survivor had ever seen the beast, so she believed, even when it supped on their closest companion or spouse in the very same chamber, or even the same bed. But as things had this time happened, the Vampire had itself not at first seen Veranilla. (This aspect of her account was demonstrably true). Now though, she added, when she and the brave guardsmen reached the doorway, the creature, even while engaged in its grisly feast, did detect them and cast on them an immobilising spell. Only the absorption of the monster in its supper presumably prevented it from rendering them fully unconscious. Therefore they had seen, but been forced to stand like statues, unable to move hand or limb. (In actuality, this was another of Veranilla’s little lies. The guards, on viewing the Vampire had certainly become frozen – with utter terror. But she had no intention of telling the officials of the court such a thing. She had even convinced the guards themselves that they had all the while been straining to

  leap to the Governor’s aid, and only ill-magic had held them back. It had never been her task to make enemies among those who might be useful).

  In the end, Veranilla continued, total night consumed the world. And at last the Vampire rose from its victim. A curious glow played about it, revealing how t:he creature seemed to unwind from itself, like a knot of serpentine vines untwisting from a stock. These fell away into the dark, sizzled out, and all illumination ceased. The fiend had vanished into thin air. Only then were any of the three able to move once more.

  At once lights were kindled. And so they beheld the dreadful remains of the Governor, and saw, each one of them, what no other ever had: the freshness of the marks and wounds, and through that freshness, what they portended. For in every other previous case the drained bodies had dried and sunk upon themselves before they were discovered, thus distorting what was, in the first one or two hours, entirely visible. An alarm was next raised. Certain others were brought in haste into the room, among them even his Grace the Bishop himself.

  Vampires – such did not exist. All these people had lost their minds. Olvero gazed superciliously upon them. And they, in turn, glared venomously at him.

  “You are a male witch,” announced the official. “You will not even merit clean
sing torture, nor the offer that you recant, and beg God’s forgiveness. For you, Olvero, such amenities are valueless. Your own creature, the Vampire, has itself betrayed you to the gallows.”

  Olvero finally felt a wave of fear.

  He rose from it gasping, as a man briefly might when drowning in an icy river.

  “Betrayed me – what lunacy is this? Such a demon does not exist. So how – betray?”

  The official composed himself to granite. He replied in a voice of steel.

  “The marks upon the body of our lord, the Governor, were closely examined. Drawings even were made of them by two of the leading artists of the city. Other bodies then, previously killed by your conjuration, were exhumed and studied, and the type of their wounds, decipherable in the light of this later evidence, displayed infallibly that you were the sole instigator. The monster is your creation – yours the will behind the wicked butchery – yours the despicable sorcery. You are damned. God will have no pity on your soul. Our work is only to expunge you, for your creature too will perish with you. That has been made plain by its own method.”

  Olvero blinked. He felt greatly tired, and the chains weighed him to the earth, or to Hell perhaps. He knew at last he was guilty, yes, he must know it. Why else had his genius abandoned him?

  Humbly; or simply brokenly, he asked, “Still I fail to grasp – what method? What was the type of the wounds? How – did they reveal my – guilt?”

  “Their pattern.”

  “I fail still –”

  “He has gone mad,” said the official. “The weight of his own infamy already destroys him. Show him one of the drawings,” he added to a clerk. “Be aware, Olvero, each corpse we have found is signed the same.”