The Poison Master

by Liz Williams

  Dee duly noting down the vision, encoded: “A lake of black pitch, from which emerged a creature with a double head and a serpent's body.” If anyone were to find these writings, they would take them for no more than an alchemical experiment: Dee's friendship with Elizabeth's spymaster Walsingham had taught him that it was best to hide a thing in plain view.

  The next vision was different.

  “Kelley?” Dee queried. “What do you see?”

  “I see a man—or perhaps he is no man at all, but rather a devil. He has eyes like the very coals in the hearth and a smooth Egyptian face, rather pale. A subtle man, I should warrant. He has the smile of a courtier. There is a woman with him, or maybe a spirit. They are staring into an alchemical crucible. The picture is distant and very small, and it has a haze, unlike my usual visions. It is like a glimpse of the future, not of the present. Strange,” Kelley murmured, frowning into the mirror. “It seems to me the girl has a look of you.”

  Dee was about to question him, but then the vision changed again. One moment Kelley was gazing into the placid surface of the mirror, the next, he was falling back onto the floor and crying out that they were consorting with devils.

  “Edward!” Dee cried. He rushed to Kelley's side, but the young man was spitting and hissing as if possessed. “What is wrong?”

  At last Kelley leaned back against the wall, white with shock and revulsion. “That I should so fall into a fit, like any counterfeit crank!”

  “Yes, but what happened?”

  “A spirit has come! A being in the form of a luminous woman, who told me that the angels with whom we have been consorting are corrupt.”

  “Wait,” Dee told him. “I will call Niclaes and Laski. For this is something they should hear.”

  Kelley, exhausted by his experience, fell asleep with his head on his arms, but not before Dee had made him recount the experience to the others. While Kelley slept, they sat in the patterned alchemical room and discussed the matter.

  “Spirits are unchancy beings,” Laski said, with magnificent insouciance. “Everyone knows it. They come and they lie, deceivers all. It is the angels to whom we should be listening.”

  “I am not so certain.” Niclaes counseled caution. “For ourselves, perhaps, it is part of the risk of the matter; we are alchemists all and we know such dangers. But we cannot gamble with other folks' souls. If we lead the Family to Meta Incognita and find that we are deceived…”

  “And you, Dee,” Laski said, when they had wrangled the question between them for some time. “You have been most silent. What is your opinion?”

  Dee looked at the three men before him: at the flashy Laski, the pensive Niclaes, and the sleeping Kelley, who, lost in tiredness and ill dreams, suddenly looked no older than a boy.

  “Niclaes is right,” Dee said wearily. “We cannot gamble with others' souls. I began this course, gathered together the expedition. I recall my old friend Richard Chancellor, now lost beneath the cold North Sea, and what he once said to me: that a captain would give his life for his crew, for any sailor. So must I risk my life; I cannot ask you to do the same. Our main task has been to find a way to take a great number of people to Meta Incognita, but expeditions have always been pioneered by the few. The mathematics of the universal language are almost in place. If we can open up the smallest passage to this new world, I will go there to see for myself if it is safe.”

  After a long moment, Niclaes said, “And if you, and then ourselves, should be deceived?”

  “You know that the Queen's court runs on coded messages, sent between her spies? I shall devise a code to deceive the very angels. If I do not return, I shall find a way to send it, by means of the mirror.”

  Chapter II

  NETHES

  Astonished, Alivet looked up. She was sprawling before the woman from her dream, the striped, translucent person who called herself Gulzhur Elaniel.

  “So you're here at last,” Elaniel said, evidently delighted. She crouched down to look into Alivet's eyes. Her black- and-silver hair fanned out across the floor. Elaniel smelled of fire, of ash, of death. Before she could stop her, Elaniel's tongue flickered out across Alivet's cheek. The woman pulled a face.

  “You're sour. La! I didn't expect that.”

  “What did you expect?” Alivet took exception to being insulted, not to mention licked. “Where am I? How did I get here?” The floor was smooth beneath her hands. This was not a vision, created by a drug. This was real.

  “I thought you'd be sweet. Like dew.”

  “Where am I?” Alivet scrambled to her feet and looked around her. The floor on which she stood was made of glass, translucent and gleaming. Alivet glimpsed movement: what appeared to be small silver fish, darting away through smoke. There were no walls: only columns made of some pale spongy substance. There was a powerful smell of burning.

  “Why, you are at home with me,” Elaniel said, surprised. She sat down cross-legged, and began combing her silky hair with her fingers. “You are on Nethes.”

  “Nethes? But I was experimenting with a drug.”

  “I know,” Elaniel said, vaguely. “You've found your poison for the Lords, and the mayjen brought you here. But Nethes is much nicer than Hathes, you know. I'm sure you'll like it here.”

  “You don't understand.” Alivet reached down and shook Elaniel's shoulder. The woman's skin felt hard and cool, more like a shell than warm flesh. “I have to get back. I have a task to accomplish. And what do you mean, the mayjen brought me?”

  “Surely you understand these things? I thought your people were familiar with hallucinogenics and entheogens. I thought you realized that when you take such substances, it is not just a vision that you see, but parts of the universe's own fabric: the roads between worlds and suns, along which spirits travel. It was down such a road that you were carried here. Although,” Elaniel added, with a frown, “it is not correct to call them ‘spirits.’ That is a primitive term and does not reflect scientific truth: that each element of the universe is alive and possesses its own consciousness. You must know this; you are an alchemist.”

  “I have to get back,” Alivet said, desperately. Metaphysics or not, time was ticking onward like the movement of a water- clock.

  “I'm sure your task can wait,” Gulzhur Elaniel said. She sounded dreamy and detached, as though nothing was entirely real.

  “No, it cannot wait.”

  Belying her vagueness, Elaniel's hand snaked round with alarming speed and caught hold of Alivet's wrist. The glowing eyes looked directly into her own.

  “No, it is you who do not understand. I tell you, it can wait. Come with me.”

  Elaniel's gaze was hypnotic. Alivet tried to pull away, but could not. She felt like a small bird, gripped in the glance of a dangerous serpent. Her head spun with dismay, yet she found herself following Elaniel meekly between the pillars and into an adjoining chamber. Here, too, there were no walls, only a tangle of fleshy red stalks that coiled around one another to form an impenetrable barrier. But one of these stalk walls was broken by an opening, through which an uncertain light cast patterns across the floor.

  “You will rest,” Elaniel said with dripping sweetness. It was clearly not a suggestion. She reached out and ran a caressing palm down Alivet's face. Her hand was hot and dry. Alivet's head was filled with fog. She started to lie down upon a spongy protrusion covered in a kind of lichen. And then she heard a voice at the back of her mind. The voice was her own; it spoke in a whisper. It said: It is only another drug. And of all things, you understand drugs, and how to conquer them. You must distance yourself from her, you must watch her pass over the surface of your mind as if she were nothing more than a dream. Do not feel fear, do not trouble yourself. Do not become engaged with her presence.

  “Thank you,” Alivet murmured. “I think I will rest, perhaps. I'm very tired.” She lay back and pretended to close her eyes, then curled on her side and made a small contented sound, all the while hiding in the back of her own conscious
ness like a seed. She listened to Elaniel's stealthy footsteps withdraw and opened her eyes just far enough to see the stalks part and let Elaniel through.

  When she was sure that the woman was gone, Alivet jumped from the couch and ran to the opening between the stalks. A wilderness of stone stretched away from the house. Beyond, were sharp peaks of rock and a great dull world hanging above the horizon. Sparks of light like hot coals hung unmoving in the upper air. The smell of fire grew stronger and Alivet saw a mass of lichen roll across the stones, with flame trickling from it. It drifted past a pod the height of a man, formed of a glassy substance that reminded Alivet of Elaniel's own flesh. With a rush of sparks the pod caught alight and exploded, releasing black seeds into the air. Not a welcoming world, Alivet thought, but she was only a few feet from the ground. If she could climb through the opening, perhaps she could find a way of escape, but this world seemed so hot…

  Alivet went back into the room and snatched up a handful of lichen. She dropped it through the opening and immediately it caught fire, releasing a sulphurous smoke. Escape became even less of an option. The very worlds corresponded to the humors, Alivet thought: Latent Emanation was wet and cold; Hathes cold and dry; Nethes hot and dry. Somewhere, there must be somewhere warm and wet on which humans could still live. Perhaps that was the world that Ghairen had called Malkuth.

  Alivet slid down and leaned against the wall. She thought of Inki, of Celana: of all the people under the sway of the Lords of Night. She could not fail now. She would try to explore the place, see what Elaniel might be hiding. She had just reached the pillars, however, when something caught her by the ankles and dragged her into the room. Alivet fell heavily to the floor. Red tendrils had roped themselves around her boots. She pulled at them, but they tightened, and more crept out across the floor to wind themselves about her wrists. This was why Elaniel had been able to leave her here, then: the very plants were under her instructions.

  Alivet, cursing, tore at the tendrils with her nails but it was no use. She was trapped, snared tight as a fly in a web. In addition to this, the room was growing hotter, filled with a heavy, dry warmth that made the sweat pour down Alivet's back beneath her restrictive garments. Fuming, she edged back against the wall so that she had something to lean against. She found herself thinking of Hathes with something approaching nostalgia. At least Hathes had been a cold world, unlike this drenching heat.

  The tendrils remained around Alivet's ankles, so that she was held in a secure red noose. She struggled, but the grip of the tendrils grew even tighter. And now the growth that composed the opposite wall was beginning to move, snaking long vines across the floor. Alivet shuffled backward, fearing that the vines would wrap themselves around her until she lay embalmed in a living cocoon, but the tendrils stopped a short distance from her feet. Swiftly, they curled together and coiled upward.

  It was a few moments before Alivet realized what was happening: the vines were knitting themselves into a cage around her. She struck out, but her wrists were swiftly secured. In a very short while, Alivet sat imprisoned within a conical mesh of tendrils. There were a few gaps in the cage, through which she could glimpse the room with the pillars, but she could not move her hands and feet in order to prise them apart. Grimly, she watched as the vines began to put forth tentative buds, as delicate as rolled parasols. Slowly, the first bud began to unfurl into a long golden flower like a lily. It was followed by others: Alivet was secured within a glorious bower that she had little inclination to appreciate.

  The perfume of the lilies was heavy and narcotic. Alivet found her head nodding as she slumped back against the wall of the bower. She fought to stay awake, but as she struggled— following the mental tricks that she had been taught in order to pursue the Search—the petals of the flowers spread wider so that she could see past the fleshy stamens and down into their rosy hearts. The petals flexed: a stronger draught of perfume sailed forth to overwhelm her.

  She woke to find Gulzhur Elaniel sitting cross-legged outside the bower, which had opened by a crack. Alivet's head felt like a seedpod: stuffed with wool and about to burst. The figure of Elaniel flashed now bright, now dark, as Alivet's vision pulsed to the pounding of her head.

  “Let me go,” she managed to say.

  Through the gap in the bower, she saw Elaniel smile.

  “But I only want to keep you safe. My dear Iraguila has told me of your penchant for adventuring; I should hate to see you hurt yourself. You might try to run away, and so burn, or become the prey of seedpods. You might fall foul of the lichen that entwines itself around the house. And then where would you be? No, here you are quite safe, quite secure. The lilies will give you marvelous dreams if you stop fighting them: simply relax and let them do their work. You have nothing to worry about anymore.”

  “You don't understand,” Alivet said thickly, echoing her earlier words. “I have to go home. Back to Latent Emanation. I have to fight the Night Lords.”

  “But of course I could never let you do anything as dangerous as that,” Gulzhur Elaniel said, and her eyes opened wide. “If I let you go, I would surely be sending you to your death. Why, when Iraguila first learned of Ghairen's plan, she was horrified. To use a young, innocent girl in such a manner? She resolved then that she must save you.”

  “But—Iraguila tried to help me,” Alivet said. A fog seemed to seethe before her eyes, robbing her of sense. “She told me that both the Night Lords and the Poison Master could be overcome.”

  “Why, Iraguila has no interest in doing battle with the Lords of Night,” Elaniel said. “She seeks only to limit the damage that Ghairen is trying to wreak. The Lords cannot be challenged, Alivet. They are the universe's own army, the gatekeepers. The order of all our worlds depends on them. I see that you understand nothing about them.”

  “Explain them to me, then,” Alivet whispered. Her head was swimming and she was no longer sure if this was the effect of the perfume, or simply of confusion.

  Elaniel clapped her hands, as if asked to tell a favorite story to a child. “It is quite simple. All of our people came to these worlds through a single gate, from the same place. Some, such as my people and the Hathanassi, came thousands of years ago. Some—your own folk—have been here for only a few hundred. Our ancestors all came from the world named ‘Malkuth.’ You know it as the Origin; to its people, it is called ‘Earth’ or simply ‘the world.’ It is a terrible place, wracked by plague and war—the lowest and worst place of all. But every so often a few people, wiser or more desperate from the rest, manage to break free of their bonds and find a way to summon the sentinels and pass through the gate to this part of the universe, where there are a cluster of inhabitable worlds.”

  “The sentinels?” Alivet asked, but she felt that she knew what Elaniel was going to say.

  “You know them as the Lords of Night. They are those beings who guard these worlds, who permit us to pass from world to world when we are ready.”

  “How do we become ‘ready’?”

  “Those of us who live in the longer-established human worlds are wiser than you, most naturally,” Elaniel said. She spoke kindly, condescendingly, as though Alivet were a child indeed. “We have evolved, physically. And we have evolved, too, through spiritual practice: we meditate, day by day, we pray, we make offerings to those who are yet higher than ourselves—to the Kherubim, the gatekeepers or sentinels, who guard us.”

  “You worship the Night Lords? They're here?” Alivet felt as though the floor had caved in beneath her, the breath forced from her lungs.

  “We welcome them. They watch us, guard us, guide us. They protect us. They are our angels.”

  “How do you know they protect you?”

  “Why, they tell us so.” For an instant, a flicker of doubt passed over Elaniel's features, so swiftly that Alivet was not certain that she had imagined it.

  “But on my world the Lords of Night do terrible things,” Alivet protested. “They hold people captive as slaves; they are keeping
my own sister. They have folk blinded as punishment, and their servants rule the populace as they please.” But even as she spoke she thought of those folk who chose to remain unseeing of the Lords' true nature, who took favors from the Unpriests in exchange for their protection, who would hand over other humans to the Lords' creatures for their own gain. The Unpriests themselves were human. The thought gave her an entirely unwanted insight into the na ture of Elaniel. She wondered what this woman might really be getting from the Lords.

  Elaniel put her head on one side and smiled.

  “Of course, the Kherubim welcome some of our own people to them. It is an honor to serve them. I'm sure your folk have misunderstood the situation. And certainly, the Kherubim wish only to help you.” She paused, adding kindly, “It's difficult, perhaps, for those of a lower spiritual level to understand the motives of the higher.”

  Alivet did not understand what Elaniel meant by “spiritual,” but she knew when she was being patronized. She took a deep breath to quell her rising rage and said, “You say that the Origin is a place called ‘Earth.’ Is it possible to travel there?”

  “Why should you want to?”

  “Let's say curiosity.”

  “If you could find your way back through a portal and a ship, perhaps,” Gulzhur Elaniel said. “But you could have little reason to try. Best you stay here, and learn enlightenment over time, and tell us what you know of alchemy.” A greedy light flickered in Elaniel's eyes: this, then, must be why Iraguila Ust had schemed to bring her here. Like Ghairen, the Nethenassi too must be in need of information. “I will take pleasure in teaching you the Hundred Hymns,” Elaniel went on. “The Prayers of Praising and Lamentation. You do not belong in this level, and so cannot have free rein within it, but that does not mean that you are incapable of learning.”

  Her voice, filled with a drowsy sweetness, filled the air, just as the perfume of the lilies had done. Alivet found both to be intolerable. To make Elaniel go away, she said, as humbly as she could manage, “I will try to be worthy of your teaching. But I am very tired, and so—”