Tales of the Old World

by Marc Gascoigne

  “I am the Lady Khemalla of Lahmia,” she said in a voice that whispered like the shifting desert sands of her long-dead homeland. “I bid you welcome to my home.”

  “Then I am not a prisoner here?” asked Giovanni, surprised at his directness of his own question.

  “You are my guest,” she smiled. “And, while you are my guest, it pleases me for you to paint my portrait.” She gestured at the paintings around them. “As you can see, I have a taste for art. And occasionally for artists too.”

  She smiled at this last comment, blood-red lips curling back to show the subtle points of concealed fangs.

  “Why me?” asked Giovanni, pouring himself a generous measure of wine from the decanter. Doomed as he was, he saw no need to deny himself a few final pleasures.

  “If you know what I am, then you must understand that it has been many years since I have gazed upon my own face in the glass of any mirror. To never again see the features of your reflection, to live so long that you perhaps forget the image of your own face, can you begin to imagine what that might be like, mortal? Is it any wonder that so many of my kind give themselves fully over to madness and cruelty when they have nothing left to remind them of their own humanity? I can only see myself through the eyes of others, and so I choose to do so only through the eyes of the greatest artists of each age.”

  She paused, favouring him with a look from the deep desert oases of her eyes as she again gestured at the paintings hanging on the walls around them. “You should be honoured, little mortal. After all, consider the company I am including you in here.”

  “You know that I have a reputation for only painting the truth as I see it.” Nervous, he reached to refill his already empty glass, concentrating hard to quell the involuntary tremor in his hands. “It is a trait of mine that found little favour with my previous patrons. I have discovered to my cost that people wish only to have their own flattering self-image of themselves reflected back at them.”

  She smiled at his show of bravado. “I chose you because of your reputation. You say you only paint the truth, the true soul of your subject. Very well, then that is what I want, brave little mortal. The truth. Look at me and paint what you see. To try and capture on canvas the soul of one of my kind; what greater challenge could there be for an artist?”

  “And afterwards, when the work is complete? You will let me leave?”

  “You will be free to refuse my hospitality when you have gifted me something that I deem worthy of your talents. If your work pleases me you will be well rewarded for your troubles, I promise you.”

  “And if it does not, what then?”

  The question hung unanswered in the air between them.

  Giovanni set down his goblet and went over to the easel and blank canvas set up nearby. As he had expected, there was a palette of every imaginable kind of artist’s materials. He rummaged amongst them, selecting a charcoal pencil for sketching and a knife to sharpen it with. A challenge, she had called it, and so it was. To paint the soul of a creature of the darkness, an age-old liche-thing, and yet to paint only the truth of what lay beneath that perfect ageless skin while still producing something that would please this most demanding of patrons. This would either be the greatest work of his life, he thought, or merely his last.

  He turned back to his waiting subject, his practised eye seeing her at this earliest stage as merely a vexing collection of surfaces, angles, lines and subtle blends of light and shadow. The fine detail, in which lay those crucial insubstantial elements that would determine whether he lived or died here, would come later.

  “Shall we begin?” he said.

  Like the villa’s other inhabitants, he worked only at night now and slept by day. Each night after sundown they came for him, and each night she sat for him. She talked while he worked—he always encouraged his subjects to talk, the better to understand them and their lives, for a portrait should speak of far more than its subject’s mere outward physical appearance—and as he worked he heard tales of her homeland. Tales of gods, heroes and villains whose names and deeds are remembered now by none other than those of her kind; tales of mighty cities and impregnable fortresses now reduced to a few ancient crumbling ruins buried and forgotten beneath the desert sands.

  Some nights they did not come for him. On those nights, she sent apologies for her absence, and gifts of fine wines and food, and books to let him pass the time in his cell more easily. The books, usually works of history or philosophy, fascinated him. Several of them were written in languages completely unknown to Giovanni—the languages of legendary and far Cathay or Nippon, he thought—while one was composed of thin leafs of hammer-beaten copper and inlaid with a queer hieroglyphic script which he doubted was even human in origin.

  He knew that there were other occupants of the villa, although besides his silent faceless gaolers and his patron herself he had seen none of them. But as he lay in his cell reading on those work-free nights, he heard much activity going on around him. Each night brought visitors to the place. He heard the clatter of rider’s hooves and the rumble of coach wheels and the jangle of pack team harnesses, and once he thought he heard the beating of heavy leather wings and perhaps even saw the fleeting shadow of something vast and bat-like momentarily blotting out the moonlit window above his bed.

  There were other sounds too—screams and sobs and once the unmistakable cry of an infant child—from the cellars deep beneath his feet. At such times Giovanni buried his face into the mattress of his bedding or read aloud from the book in his hand until either the sounds had ceased or he had convinced himself that he could no longer hear them.

  One night he awoke in his room. The sitting had been cut short that night. One of the black-cloaked servant things had entered and fearfully handed its mistress a sealed scroll tube. As she read it her face had changed—transformed, Giovanni thought—and for a second he saw something of the savage and cruel creature of darkness that lay beneath the human mask she presented to him. The news was both urgent and unwelcome and she had abruptly ended the night’s session, issuing curt orders for him to be escorted back to his room. He had fallen asleep as soon as he lay down on the bedding, exhausted by the continued effort of keeping up with the night-time schedule of his new employer.

  Again, he heard the sound that had awoken him. There was someone in the room with him.

  A face detached itself from the shadowy gloom of the cell, leaning over the bed and glared angrily down angrily at him. Jagged teeth, too many of them for any human mouth, crowded out from snarling lips. It was her servant, Mariato, the one that had approached him in the tavern that night. He had obviously just fed, and his breath was thick with the slaughterhouse reek of blood.

  “Scheherazade. That is what I shall call you,” the vampire growled, glaring down at him with eyes full of hate and the madness of blood-lust. “Do you know the name, little painter? It is a name from her homeland, a storyteller who prolonged her life for a thousand and one nights by entertaining her master with tales and fables.”

  The vampire raised one bristle-covered hand, pointing at the half-face of Mannslieb in the sky above. The ring on his finger flashed green in the moonlight.

  “How many nights do you think you have left, my Scheherazade? Her enemies are close, and by the time Mannslieb’s face shines full again, we will be gone from here. Will your precious painting be finished by then? I think not, for such things take great time and care, do they not?”

  He paused, leaning in closer, hissing into Giovanni’s face, stifling him with the sour reek of his carrion breath.

  “She will not take you with us, and she cannot leave you here alive for our enemies to find. So what is she to do with you then, my Scheherazade?”

  The vampire melted back into the shadows, its voice a whispering promise from out of the darkness. “When Mannslieb’s face shines full again, then you will be mine.”

  “Your servant Mariato, he doesn’t like me.” She looked up with interest. This was the
first time he had dared speak to her without permission. She lay reclining on the couch in the position that he had first seen her in. A bowl of strange dark-skinned fruit lay on the floor before her. The main composition of the piece was complete, and all he needed to concentrate on now was the detail of the face.

  “He is jealous,” she answered. “He is afraid that I will grow bored with him and seek to make another my favourite in his stead.” She looked at him sharply. “Has he disturbed you? Has he said or done anything to interrupt your work?”

  Giovanni kept his eyes on his work, unwilling to meet her keen gaze. “Has he a right to be jealous?”

  She smiled, favouring him with a look of secret amusement. “Perhaps,” she mused. “His kind always have their place at my side, but they are always dull and unimaginative. Perhaps I will take a new consort, not a warrior or a nobleman this time. Perhaps this time an artist? What do you think, little mortal? Shall I make you my new paramour and grant you the gift of eternal life in darkness?”

  She laughed, picking up a fruit from the bowl and biting deep into it, enjoying the taste of his fear. Thick juice, obscenely scarlet in colour, bled out of the fruit as she ate it.

  Giovanni studied the lines and contours of the painted face on the canvas in front of him. A few brushstrokes, a subtle touch of shading, and he had added an extra element of sardonic cruelty to the line of her smile.

  The next night he returned to his cell at dawn to find a small tied leather pouch sitting on his bed. He opened it, pouring out a quantity of powdered ash. Puzzled, Giovanni ran his fingers through the stuff, finding it strangely unpleasant to the touch. There was something amongst it. Giovanni gingerly picked it up, discovering it to be a ring. He held it up, the light of the rising sun catching the familiar emerald stone set upon it.

  It seemed that Mariato no longer occupied the same position amongst his mistress’ favours as he had once done.

  Giovanni knew that their time together was coming to an end. Mannslieb hung high in the night sky, almost full, and for the last few nights there had been more activity than usual in the villa. He heard the sound of heavy boxes—earth-filled coffins, he supposed—being dragged up from the cellars and loaded into wagons. He worked in daylight hours too now; foregoing sleep and working on the painting alone in his cell, making changes so subtle that he doubted anyone other than he would notice the difference. Adding new details and taking away others. Revising. Reworking. Perfecting. He was haggard and gaunt, exhausted from too little food and sleep, looking more like one of her pale ghoul-thing servants than the portly florid-faced drunk who had been brought here just scant weeks ago.

  All that mattered now was the painting itself. The greatest work of his life, that is what he had said he would have to produce, and that is what he had done. After that, he discovered to his surprise, nothing else really mattered.

  She sent for him the next night, with Mannslieb shining full-faced in the night sky. The painting too, was now complete.

  She stood looking at it. The room had been stripped almost bare, and the easel that the canvas stood on was the most significant item left in it. There were faint outlines on the walls where her portraits had hung.

  “You are leaving?” he said, more in statement than question.

  “We have many enemies, my kind. Not just the witch hunters with their silver and fire. We wage war amongst ourselves, fighting over sovereignty of the night. It has become too dangerous to remain here.”

  She gestured towards the painting. “It is beautiful, master Gottio. I thank you for your gift. What do you call it?”

  “Unchanging Beauty,” he answered, joining her to look at his masterpiece. It showed her standing regally against a backdrop of palatial splendour. Giovanni’s talent had captured all her cruel and terrible beauty as the others before him had also done, but the real artistry was in the detail of the trappings around her. Look closer and the eye was drawn to the tarnished gold of the throne behind her, the subtle patterns of mildew creeping across the wall tapestries, the broken pinnacles of the palace towers seen through the window in the far background. It was a world where everything other than her was subject to change and decay. Only she was unchanging. Only she was forever.

  “Then my task here is done. I am free to leave now?” He looked at her, half in hope, half in dread.

  “I had thought to keep you here with me as an new diversion to replace poor Mariato.” She looked at him, trying to gauge his reaction, toying with him yet again.

  “But, no, you would make a poor vampire, master Gottio,” she reassured him, relishing one last taste of his fear. “There is something in our nature that destroys any creative ability we may have had in our mortal lives, and I would not deny the world the great works still within you. So, yes, you are free to go.”

  “And my reward?”

  She gestured towards a small open casket nearby. Giovanni glanced at it, silently toting up the value of the gold and precious stones it contained and coming to a figure comparable with a minor merchant prince’s ransom. When he looked back, she was holding a goblet of wine out to him.

  “What is it?” he asked, suspecting one final cruel jest.

  “A little wine mixed with a sleeping draught, the same one that Mariato tried to lull you with. Call it a final precaution, for your own safety. When you awaken, you will be safe and in familiar surroundings, I promise you. I could compel you to drink it, but this way is easier.”

  He took it, raising it to his lips and drinking. She watched him intently as he did so. The wine was excellent, as he expected, but mixed in with it, the taste of something else, not any kind of potion or sleeping draught. Something dark and rich, something that rose up to overwhelm his senses.

  “An extra gift,” she said, seeing the reaction in his eyes. “With your painting, you have given me a part of yourself. It only seemed fair that I give you something equally valuable in return. Farewell, little mortal, I look forward to seeing what uses you will put my gift to.”

  She reached out with preternatural reflexes to catch him as he fell, as the darkness rushed in to envelop his numbed senses…

  He awoke in blinding daylight, crying out in pain as the unaccustomed sunlight stabbed into his eyes. When he recovered, he realised that he was in the pauper’s attic garret he called home. The precious casket lay on the floor beside him.

  It took him several hours to realise the nature of the additional gift she had given him.

  He sat inspecting his reflection in the small cracked looking glass he had finally managed to find amongst the jumble of his possessions. Days ago he had been a haggard wreck, now there was not a trace of the ordeal left upon him, none of the exhaustion of the last few weeks. He looked and felt better than he had in years. In fact…

  Shallya’s mercy, he thought, studying the reflection of his face in the mirror. I look ten years younger!

  He thought of certain legends about her kind, about the gifts they granted to their loyal mortal servants and about the restorative powers of…

  Of vampire blood. Only the smallest portion, but he could feel it flowing in his veins, feel her inside him. Her life-force added to his own. Had she done this with the others, he wondered, and then he remembered that the da Venzio had been reputed to have lived to over a century in age—blessed by the mercy goddess, they said, in reward for the work he had done in her great temple in Remas—and of how Bardovo had lived long enough to paint not just the portrait of the Marco Columbo but also that of the legendary explorer’s merchant prince great-grandson.

  He wondered how long he, Giovanni Gottio, had, and about how he would put his time to best use.

  He looked around his squalid attic, seeing only the detritus of his former miserable life: smashed wine bottles and pieces of cheap parchment torn up in anger and thrown in crumpled balls across the room. He picked one up, smoothing it out and recognising it as the abandoned portrait sketch of a local tavern girl. The workmanship was poor and he could see w
hy he had so quickly abandoned the piece, but looking at it with fresh vision he could see possibilities in its line and form that had not been there to him before.

  He found his drawing board and pinned the parchment to it, sitting looking at it in quiet contemplation. After a while, he searched amongst the debris on the floor and found the broken end of a charcoal pencil.

  And with it, he began to draw.

  SEVENTH BOON

  Mitchel Scanlon

  It was late and, given the hour, the draughty expanse of the orphanage’s dining hall seemed hardly warmer than the wintry night outside. Yet despite having been roused blearily from their beds, a dozen barefoot children filed across the cold flagstone floor without complaint. Quiet and dutiful, they came to where Sister Altruda stood with the visitors and formed a line facing them, heads up and spines held straight like diminutive soldiers summoned to a parade ground muster. Then, seeing one of the visitors step forward to inspect them, twelve small faces grew bright with sudden hope—only for those hopes to be abruptly dashed as, finishing her inspection, the young woman turned to Sister Altruda to deliver a terse and crushing verdict. “No,” Frau Forst said, “none of these will do.”

  As one, twelve faces fell. Watching it, Sister Altruda felt a familiar sadness to see twelve childish hearts hardened a little more against hope by the pain of rejection. It could not be helped. As priestess to the goddess of mercy, Sister Altruda’s own heart went out to them. But, as director of the Orphanage of Our Lady Shallya of the Blessed Heart, she was a realist. Marienburg manufactured so many unwanted children and if she could find even one a new home tonight it would be a triumph. Though, given that her visitors had spent the better part of an hour viewing dozens of children now without finding one to please them, presently even that small victory seemed beyond her.