The Poison Master

by Liz Williams

  “You have disseminated my essence,” it told her. “I wait to reconfigure.”

  “It won't be a long wait. In the meantime, I need your help, to find my sister.” She stepped across the imaginary space and took the spirit by the hand. The spirit looked down dubiously at their linked fingers.

  “Take me with you,” Alivet whispered.

  The next moment, they were gliding swiftly through halls and passages. She saw now that the Palace of Night was far vaster than she had imagined. They passed through halls in which suns glowed in firework clusters and stars poured like waterfalls down the walls. The possibility of finding Inki in this immensity of space seemed suddenly remote.

  They came into a room where an armillary sphere sat upon a table, and as Alivet drew nearer, she saw that the jeweled planets were real: she could witness the glow of cities across their nightsides, count seas, and mountains. She wanted to stay and look, but the spirit swept her by. A second room, a second set of spheres.

  “Look,” the spirit said. “These are our worlds.” The worlds of the Cabala hung in the lambent air, each separated by a veil of dust. Alivet saw a white and blue planet like a marble, then a dim azure ball that she knew to be Latent Emanation. Red Hathes, ash-gray Nethes, and a pale gleaming world which the spirit recognized as Tiphareth and whispered the name in her ear. Beyond Tiphareth, however, the worlds were lost in clouds.

  “And that's the Origin,” Alivet said in fascination, staring down at the little marbled world. It did not seem to be part of the same system, somehow: it wavered and changed as she peered at it and she saw that this world and her own were separated by an immense gulf, a jagged edge of night.

  “That is where we come from,” the spirit said, pointing to the marbled world. “A world in another part of the universe, linked to these worlds by a gateway. I remember,” the ally said, and Alivet knew that it spoke the truth. Memory, passed down in the human bloodline; stored in the genetic fibers of the species.

  The spirit pointed at the floor, which seemed to be made of stone, or perhaps it was wood, or earth—Alivet could not tell. The Night Palace was too strange for her to take in; her mind was creating familiar images to cope with the inexplicable. But over the floor crept something like a flock of beetles. Alivet bent her head to look more closely and saw that they were none other than the Lords.

  “When the first groups of humans came to these worlds,” the spirit said, “from Babylon and Egypt, seeking the lands of the dead, all went well. The Lords themselves traveled freely between their dimension and this one—until the Lords became corrupt, ensnared in this more physical realm. Over time, even their appearance altered and they could no longer return to their own dimension. They sought to do as humans did, to keep slaves. But you were not stolen away by the Lords; you chose to come. A group of occultists, who had already found an opening to the crossing, chanced upon ancient technology. They summoned the Lords, brought them through to Earth, and then sealed the route behind them.

  “But the one who did the summoning, who learned to speak the language of the universe—he was your ancestor, Alivet. I know this. I have the knowledge of all human blood. He was your many times great-grandfather: the magus mathematician Dr. John Dee.”

  “My ancestor brought us here?”

  “He was responsible for the last group of humans who made the crossing between the stars. The descendants of their leaders are now the Nine Families. But Dee quarreled with them when they reached Latent: encouraged by the Lords, they sought power for themselves.”

  “It seems to me he still did us a great wrong,” Alivet said.

  “Perhaps. He did what he thought was right, at the time.”

  “And now I do what I believe to be right, also. But you can free us from the Lords, or so Ghairen believes. The latent light which you now hold will slay them, he says, or dispatch them back to their own dimension.” She could feel her grip starting to slip as the blood tabernanthe faded from her bloodstream. The palace contracted around her, suns winking out like mayflies, moons fading from the skies of night. She stood for a moment in a small paneled room, and then it was gone and she was back on the pallet, stiff and cold and dreaming no longer. She had seen a universe of wonders, but she still hadn't found Inki.

  Next day, silent in her corner of the kitchen, Alivet waited. She had slept in snatches, waking once with a shock, convinced that a Night Lord had been standing over her, but there was nothing there. Very early in the morning, when just a few of the apprentices were yawning their way to the washing area, Alivet had checked the small chamber above the kitchen. Ghairen was nowhere to be seen. The day had been spent in helping the chefs prepare an endless parade of dishes for the banquet, which even now was taking place within the depths of the Palace of Night.

  Now Alivet watched as the dishes of the main course were carried upstairs. The head chef had excelled himself. The foods he had prepared were rarefied to their finest extreme: all blood and essence. Alivet did not like to think where such food came from, but she doubted that it had been produced by the meat-racks in the city. Wild things, she thought, reared in the deep swamps of the delta, hunted down. The notion reminded her uncomfortably of her aunt. The water-clock moved on. The seemingly endless parade of dishes was borne from view. At last it was time for dessert.

  Alivet hovered anxiously as the sorbets, each one with its pool of night around the tabernanthe-incarnadined ice, were taken upstairs by the serving staff. She remembered the spirit of the blood tabernanthe: that red, vivid figure. Have I done enough to help you? she asked silently. Will you free us from the Lords?—but there was no reply. She could not just wait down here until all chaos broke loose; she had to know what was happening. Where was Ghairen? And where was Inki?

  Alivet waited for a frozen moment until she was certain that the attention of the head chef was elsewhere, and then she slipped after the servers. Her footsteps rattled on the stairs, but no one looked up. Alivet followed the servers into the hall. Apart from a pair of Enbonded at the far end of the hallway, their numb gaze fixed on the great bronze doors, it was empty. Alivet hastened to the dining hall, her footsteps muffled by the carpet. The Enbonded were still looking toward the doors, but now Alivet could see that there was a tiny crack between the door frame and the wall. She sidled behind the wall curtains, put her eye to the crack, and waited.

  Inside, it was almost dark. A faint phosphorescence illuminated the high, echoing vaults of the hall. Beneath, the shadowy presences of the Lords of Night dined on the last of the meat essences. There must have been a hundred of them. Each Lord was different, as if snatched from a variety of nightmares. Alivet could see the great arch of ammonite skulls; the twisting spines that curved like untrimmed fingernails. Their carapaces betrayed hints of indigo and jade, overlain with a veneer of darkness. She saw the roll and slide of their lambent eyes, trained to other dimensions, but now fixed purely upon the world around them. She thought of the blood tabernanthe. She thought: You are nothing more than beetles under my heel. Somehow, however, the notion was not convincing.

  Human Enbonded moved among the Lords like automata. They were dressed as finely as the Unpriests themselves: in stiff, intricate folds of silk that swung as they walked. Their hair was hidden beneath bronze hoods, which coiled out behind them like rams' horns. They wore gloves, with artificial talons. The aesthetics of such formality were beyond her, unless one held the uncomfortable clothes and the weird hoods to be evidence of a refined, obscure sadism.

  There was a susurrus of anticipation as the desserts were passed around the hall by the silent serving staff, who then trooped away. Alivet, her hearing fine-tuned by anticipation, heard the tiny crack as the first silver spoon touched the first sorbet; then another, and then another. There was the grinding crunch of mandibles upon ice. Alivet took a trembling breath. The Lords, moving as one, each swallowed a single spoonful of blood tabernanthe. The world hung, suspended in time, like a globe upon an armillary sphere. She thought of the ligh
t of a sun, absorbed and hidden, ready for release. The memory of a crimson figure danced inside her mind. Alivet breathed out.

  And the first Lord exploded.

  The blood tabernanthe electrified every filament of the Lord's body before it flared up into a great column of brilliance. The metal doors of the dining room were blasted from their hinges and flew down the hallway like leaves. Alivet, thrown back against the wall, could see nothing but the shattered form of the Lord branded upon her retinas, but she could taste the light which streamed out from the dining hall: the hard, clear sunlight of mountain peaks; the roseate depths of sundown over ocean; the golden, glittering brightness at midsummer noon, and behind them all the taste of human blood and human memories.

  She dimly saw that, exposed to light, a second Lord was transformed into a pillar of flame, then another, and then all of them. It had worked. The Lords were gone up in fire, snatched up by the poisonous drug so carefully concealed in darkness and ice by the skillful hands of Alivet. Were they dying, or becoming transformed? And into what? But she could not stay and witness her triumph; the brightness was too much to bear. Afraid for what remained of her sight, Alivet turned. Hands gripped her shoulders and Alivet struck out.

  “Alivet! It's me,” Ghairen said. His voice was ragged.

  “Where's Inki? Did you find her?”

  “I found the cells. I couldn't see your sister. Alivet, we've got to get out of here. The whole palace is beginning to fracture.”

  “No! I'm going to find Inki.” Alivet wrenched free of Ghairen's protective hands. “Tell me where the cells are.” She could hardly see. She reached out, groping, and found the wall curtains.

  “Alivet, listen—” Ghairen sounded utterly exasperated, but Alivet did not care.

  “Where are the cells?”

  There was a splitting, rending sound, like an immense tree struck by lightning. Alivet blinked upward. A crack was running the length of the ceiling.

  “All right!” she heard Ghairen say above the tumult. “We'll go together.”

  He took her hand and they stumbled down the hallway. Alivet's vision began to clear. The hall split down its length and the carpet rolled up like a tongue. Alivet was hurled against the wall. Ghairen pulled her back onto the shifting floor.

  “Down the stairs.”

  A twisting spiral led down into the depths of the Night Palace. Alivet, by now almost entirely lost, caught sight of the dormitory through a gaping hole in the wall and realized that they were close to the stairs leading down to the kitchens. The metal panels peeled away from the wall like riverbirch bark and fell to the floor. Alivet fell. Ghairen pulled her upright. The wall to her left collapsed in a shower of shards; through the gap, she glimpsed the marshes beneath a green twilight sky.

  “Why is it collapsing?” she shouted as they bolted down the stairs.

  “Release of energy from the Lords' physical bodies. You were lucky not to have been killed—I went to the kitchen to find you and you weren't there.”

  “I wanted to see what would happen. Why didn't you tell me they'd explode like that?”

  “I didn't know,” Ghairen admitted. “I thought they might just dematerialize.”

  They had reached the bottom of the stairs. Alivet looked back to see that the walls of the staircase had now peeled away: the spiral led up into a shattered ruin. Sky poured through the broken roof of the Palace of Night.

  “Where are the Lords now?”

  “I don't know,” Ghairen said. His foresight and planning seemed to go no further than the disintegration of the Lords. Perhaps he had never really believed that they would be successful.

  “Where are the cells?”

  “Down there.” Ghairen pointed. Alivet looked down onto an iron walkway, running along a series of cages. Each cage was roughly the height of a man: an external skeleton of bars and straps. Blood gleamed in the seething light and for a brief moment Alivet seemed to see the red spirit of the tabernanthe, head raised in grief and exultation. She brushed past Ghairen and ran down the steps to the walkway.

  “Inki? Where are you?”

  The first cells were empty, but eyes looked out at her from the darker cells along the walkway.

  “Inki?”

  And a voice answered: “I'm down here.”

  Alivet looked down to see a sea of pale faces staring up through a grille in the walkway. One of them—one-eyed but defiant—was the face of her sister.

  “Inkirietta!” Alivet fell to her knees and started pulling at the grille. Ghairen dropped beside her to help. Using the knife as a lever, they prised up the nails and lifted the grille. Between them, they hauled Inki through the gap. Alivet threw herself at her sister.

  “Sister Inkirietta Dee,” Ghairen said behind her. “Good to see you again.”

  “I knew you'd come,” Inki said. “Both of you.” The walkway shuddered once, like an animal straining against its chains. The empty cages broke away and fell from the walkway, splashing down into the marsh. Other prisoners, wan and dazed, were coming up through the gap to stand on what was now a fragile platform, jutting over the water. The remains of the palace, a huge and complex ruin, rose before them.

  “Go through the walls!” Ghairen shouted. “Over there, toward the causeway.”

  Alivet turned. In the water below, dark thrashing shapes were beginning to congregate. Alivet drew Inki more tightly to her side and turned to follow the prisoners.

  “Don't you want to say good-bye?” someone said. The voice was sibilant, and familiar. Alivet spun around. And there was Iraguila Ust, covered in ash and holding a needle to a prisoner's throat.

  “Iraguila,” Alivet said, and then she recognized the prisoner. It was then that she realized that Ghairen had not been the only one to watch and plan.

  “Aunty!” Inki cried.

  Alivet's aunt Elitta was smaller and older than she remembered, her gray hair disheveled and her clothes torn. She struggled, but Ust touched the needle to her throat and Elitta grew still.

  “I don't want her,” Ust hissed. Her face was distorted with fury. “I am a Sanguinant. I want the architects who brought down my masters. You first, and then him. Step forward.”

  Alivet looked cautiously around. She and Inki stood between Ghairen and Ust; if he tried one of his poison-at-adistance tricks, it would miss the governess and fall on them. She stepped forward, within reach of the needle. Ust thrust Elitta away and lunged at Alivet's throat, but Alivet dodged. Grasping Ust's wrist, she seized the woman by the arm and bent it back, but as she did so, she lost her own footing on the trembling platform. Alivet and Ust fell over the side and into the marsh.

  Ust was torn from her grasp the moment they hit the water and vanished beneath its churning surface. Alivet felt a rasping, suckered thing wrap itself around her like a vine. She, too, was pulled down, into a forest of weeds. The weeds clung, wrapping themselves around her arms and throat, and gripping her ankles in a razor embrace. A swirl of mud flew up to blind her.

  She thought of the thing that had fallen from the anube's pole to seize the Unpriests and drag them down. She struck out with the knife, slashing at the weeds, and broke free. But even as she struck upward from the surface, the current seized her and took her down into deep water. Her lungs were bursting, but strangely, it reminded her of the Search. The depths were serene, light filtering dimly down. She thought that perhaps it would be best to go with it, let herself be carried out on the current, but then that small cold voice at the back of her mind, that served her so well during the Searches, said: You are drowning. Swim! And Alivet swam up, past a great jutting outcrop of rock, and into the air.

  Just as she broke the surface, she was hauled back down. Rank water once more filled her mouth and this time she tasted blood. Iridescent light filled the water; she saw a great mouth and eyes like lamps, then the sudden vision of Iraguila's head, torn off at the neck. Iraguila looked startled, as if surprised behind a keyhole. Something wrenched at Alivet's ankle and she was gripped from
behind by a sinuous, strong form. Her vision went black, she lashed out, but then she was dragged out of the water and over the side of a pilgrimage boat. The anube who had rescued her was close behind.

  Alivet lay gasping on the boards like a beached fish. Far above her head, she saw a trio of anxious faces peering over the side of the platform. Ghairen's lips moved; he was calling to her but her ears were full of water and she could not hear him past the ringing in her head.

  “I'm all right,” she thought she said.

  The shattered remains of the Night Palace filled the sky, an immense latticed ruin, lit by a ghostly column of light that twisted and turned and knitted itself into a shining coil. As Alivet watched, a tiny hole of nothingness broke open the air. The coil swept forward, questing like a serpent, then poured through the hole, which widened briefly to form a crack. Through it, Alivet glimpsed familiar forms: four-faced, spinning beings. One of them looked back and she met its eyes. She could not interpret what she saw there: elation, despair? But then the crack closed behind the host with an audible snap.

  “The Lords have gone,” the anube said, sounding no more than faintly interested. Perhaps the Lords had been seeking such openings all along, Alivet thought; minute cracks between dimensions through which they could escape, once freed of their corrupted physical form. And if a human looked through such a thing, would it be enough to blind them?

  Alivet sat up. Fighting was taking place within the ruins. She saw a group of Enbonded, tiny as birds in the rigging of the wreckage, swarming down toward a group of Unpriests. There was the sudden flare of a webgun, followed by a rain of debris as the Enbonded retaliated. Alivet watched as the two groups flowed together. Unpriests and Enbonded fell from the platform like ripe fruit, to be swallowed by the marsh. Unhurriedly, the anube steered the boat toward what remained of the ladder, where three figures were already climbing down.