Ghosteria Volume 1: The Stories (Ghostgeria)

by Tanith Lee

  But this self-analysis he concealed from himself with considerable cunning. He experienced only the pangs of her rejection and scorn, and winced as he savoured them like sour wine. Obsessed, he gazed at the vase of blue crystal, and pondered the toys of magic he had given her formerly.

  The vase.

  The stopper of rose-opal had already been removed by one of the spells of the Forax Foramen, a copy of which ancient book (there were but three copies on earth) was the property of Subyrus. At this spell, written in gold leaf on sheets of black bull’s hide, Subyrus had barely glanced. His knowledge was vast and his sorcerous vocabulary extensive. The stopper leapt from the neck of the vase – Subyrus caught it and set it by. Inside the crystal there commenced the foaming and lathering which the scholar had described to the satchel-man.

  At Subyrus’s other hand lay a second tome. No exact copies of this book existed, for it was the task of each individual mage to compile his own version. The general title of such a compendium being ‘Tabulas Mortem, Lists of the Dead’.

  From these lists Subyrus had selected seventy names, a hundredth portion of the number of souls said to be trapped in the vase. They were accordingly names of those who had died in peculiar circumstances, and in an aura of shadows, such as might indicate the nearness at that time of the soul-snaring crystal and of someone who could operate its magic.

  With each name there obtained attendant rituals of appeasement, summoning and other things that might apply when wishing to contact the dead. All were subtly different from each other, however similar seeming to the uneducated eye.

  The fire sank on the hearth now, paled, and began to smell of incense and moist rank soil.

  Subyrus had performed the correct ritual and called the first name. He omitted from it the five inflections that would extend the summons beyond the world, since his intent was centred on the trapped ghosts of the vase. He had also discarded the name of the king from whose tomb the vase had been taken. Occult theory suggested that such a spirit, having been recently obedient to an inaccurate summons, (such as the scholar’s), could thereby increase its resistance to obeying any other summons for some while after. So the name Subyrus named was a fresh one. Nor, though the ritual was perfect, was it answered.

  That soul, then, had never been encaged in the vase. Subyrus erased the name from his selection, and commenced the ritual for a second name.

  In Vaim it was midnight, and over the hill above the magician’s subculum the configurations of midnight were jewelled out in stars.

  Subyrus spoke the nineteenth name.

  And was answered.

  The moistureless foam-clouds gathered and overspilled the vase. White bubbles and curlicues expanded on the air. From their midst flowed up a slender strand unlike the rest, which proceeded to form a recognisable shape. Presently, a foot-high figurine balanced on the air, just over the castellated lip of the vase. It was a warrior, like an intricately-sculptured chess piece, whose detail was intriguing on such a scale – `the minute links of the mail, the chiselled cat that crouched on the helm, the sword like a woman’s pin. And all of it matt-white as chalk.

  “I am here,” the warrior cried in bell-like miniature tones. “What do you want of me?”

  “Tell me how you came to be imprisoned in the crystal.”

  “My city was at war with another. The enemy took me in battle, and strove to gain, by torture, knowledge of a way our defences might be breached. When I would say nothing, a magician entered. He worked spells behind a screen. Then I was slain and my ghost sucked into the vase. Next moment, the magician summoned me forth, and they asked me again, and I told them everything.”

  “So,” Subyrus remarked, “what you would not betray as a man, you revealed carelessly once you were a spirit.”

  “Exactly. Which was as the magician had foretold.”

  “Why? Because you were embittered at your psychic capture?”

  “Not at all. But once within, human things ceased to matter to me. Old loyalties of the world, its creeds, yearnings and antipathies – these foibles are as dreams to those of us who dwell in the vase.”

  “Dwell? Is there room then, inside that little sphere, to dwell?”

  “It would amaze you,” said the warrior.

  “No. But you may describe it.”

  “That is not normally one of the questions mortals ask when they summon us. They demand directions to our sepulchres, and ways to break in and come on our hoarded gold, or what hereditary defects afflict our line, in order that they may harm our descendants. Or they command us to carry out deeds of malevolence, to creep in small hidden areas and steal for them, or to frighten the nervous by our appearance.”

  “You have not replied to my question.”

  “Nor can I. The interior of this tiny vase houses seven thousand souls. To explain its microcosmic structure in mortal terms, even to one of the mighty Magician-Lords, would be as impossible as to describe colour to the stone-blind or music to the stone-deaf.”

  “But you are content,” said Subyrus.

  The warrior laughed flamboyantly.

  “I am.”

  “You may return,” said Subyrus, and uttered the dismissing incantation.

  Subyrus progressed to a twentieth name, a twenty-first, a twenty-second. The twenty-third answered. This time a white philosopher stood in the air, his head meekly bowed, his sequin eyes whitely gleaming with the arrogance of great learning.

  “Tell me how you came to be imprisoned in the crystal.”

  “A Tyrant acquired this vase and its spell. He feared me and the teachings I imparted to his people. I was burned alive, the spell activated, and my ghost entered the vase. Thereafter, the Tyrant would call me forth and try to force me to enact degrading tricks to titillate him. But though we who inhabit the vase must respond to a summons, we need not obey otherwise. The Tyrant waxed disappointed. He attempted to smash the vase. At length he went mad. The next man who called me forth wished only to hear my philosophies. But I related gibberish, which troubled him.”

  “Describe the interior of the vase.”

  “I refuse.”

  “You understand, my arts are of the kind which can retain you here as long as I desire?”

  “I understand. I pine, but still refuse.”

  “Go then.” And Subyrus uttered again the dismissing incantation.

  It was past three o’clock. Altogether, six white apparitions had evolved from the blue vase. Subyrus had reached the fortieth name selected from the ‘Tabulas Mortem’. He was almost too weary to speak it.

  The atmosphere was feverish and heavy with rituals observed and magics pronounced. Subyrus’s thin and beautiful hands shook slightly with fatigue, and his beautiful face had grown more skull-like. To these trivialities he was almost immune. Though exhaustion heightened his world-sated gravity.

  He said the fortieth name, and the figure of a marvellous woman rose from the vase.

  “Your death?”he asked her. She had been an empress in her day.

  “My lover was slain. I had no wish to live. But the man who brought me poison brought also this vase under his cloak. When my soul was snared, he carried the vase to distant lands. He would call me up in the houses of Lords and bid me dance for his patrons. I did this, for it amused me. He received much gold. Then, one night, in a prince’s palace, I lost interest in the jest. The prince appropriated the vase. When I begged leave to rest, the prince recited the incantation of dismissal, which the whipped man had revealed. Ironically, the prince was not comparably adept at the phrases of summoning, and could never draw me forth again.”

  The woman smiled, and touched at the white hair which streamed about her white robe.

  “Surely you miss the gorgeous mode of your earthly state?” Subyrus said.

  “Not at all.”

  “Your prison suits you, then?”

  “Wonderfully well.”

  “Describe it.”

  “Others have told me you asked a description of them
.”

  “None obliged me. Will you?”

  But the woman only smiled.

  Broodingly, Subyrus effected her dismissal.

  He pushed the further names aside, and taking up the stopper of rose-opal, replaced it in the vase. The fermentation stilled within.

  Slowly, the fire reproduced the darkness and scents that recalled Lunaria for the magician.

  The vase was proven – and ready. The promise of such a thing would flatter even Lunaria. She had had toys before. But this – perverse, oblique, its potential elusive but limitless – it resembled Lunaria herself.

  As the brazen bell-clocks of Vaim struck the fourth hour of black morning, an iron bird with chalcedony eyes (fifth of the Mechanicae) flew to the balconied windows of Lunaria’s house.

  The house stood at the crest of a hanging garden, on the eastern bank of the river.

  Here Lunaria, honouring her name, made bright the dark, turning night into day with lamplight, singing, drums, harps and rattles. Her golden windows could be seen from miles off. “There is Lunaria’s house,” insomniacs or late-abroad thieves would say, chuckling, envious and disturbed. An odour of flowers and roast meats and uncorked wines floated over the spot, and sometimes firecrackers exploded, saffron, cinnabar and snow, above the roof and walls. But after sunrise the windows turned grey and the walls held silence, as if the house had burnt itself out during the night.

  The iron bird rapped a pane with its beak.

  Lunaria, heavy-eyed, opened her window. She was not astonished or dismayed. She had seen the bird before.

  “My master asks when he may visit you.”

  Lunaria frowned.

  “He knows my fee: a gift.”

  “He will pay.”

  “Let it be something unheard of, and unsafe.”

  “It is.”

  “Tomorrow then. At sunset.”

  4. Lunaria of Vaim

  The sinking sun bobbed like a blazing boat on the river. Water and horizon had become a luminous scarlet, stippled with copper and tangerine. A fraction higher than the tallest towers of Vaim, this holocaust gave way to a dense mulberry afterglow, next to a denser blue, and finally, in the east, a strange hollow black, littered with stars.

  Such a combination of colours and gems in the apparel of man or woman, or in any room of a house, would have been dubious. But in the infallible and faultless sky, were lovely beyond belief and almost beyond bearing.

  Nevertheless, the sunset’s beauty was lost on Subyrus, or rather, alleviated, dulled. At a finger’s snap almost, he could command the illusion of such a sunset, or, impossibly, a more glorious one. It could not therefore impress or stimulate him, even though he rode directly through its red and mulberry radiance, on the back of a dragon of brass. The sixth of the Mechanicae, the dragon was equipped with seat and jewelled harness, and with two enormous wings that beat regularly up and down in a noise of metal hinges and slashed air. It caught the last light, and glittered like a fleck of the sun itself. In Vaim, presumably, citizens pointed, between admiration and terror.

  A servant beat frantically on the door of Lunaria’s bedchamber.

  “Lady – he is here!”

  “Who?” Lunaria inquired sleepily from within.

  “The Lord Subyrus,” cried the servant, plainly appalled at her forgetfulness.

  On the terrace before the house, the dragon alighted. Subyrus stilled it with a single word of power. He stepped from the jewelled harness, and contemplated the length of the hanging garden. Trees precariously leaned over under their mass of unpicked fruit, the jets of fountains pierced shadowy basins that in turn overflowed into more shadowy depths beneath. Trellised night flowers were opening and giving up their scent. In Lunaria’s garden no day flowers bloomed, and no man could walk. Sometimes the gardeners, crawling about the slanted cliff of the hanging garden to tend the growth and the water courses, fell to their deaths on the thoroughfare eighty feet- below. The only entrance to the house was through a secret door at the garden’s foot, of whose location Lunaria informed her clients. Or from the sky.

  The servant ran on to the terrace and cast himself on his knees.

  “My lady is not yet ready – but she bids you enter.”

  The servant was sallow with fear.

  Subyrus stepped through the terrace doors, and beheld a richly clad man in maddened flight down a stairway.

  Lunaria had kept one of her customers late in order that Subyrus should see him. This was but a variation on a theme she had played before.

  Near the stair foot, about to rush to a new flight – for these stairs passed right the way to the interior side of the secret door – the customer paused, and looked up in a spasm of anguish.

  “You have nothing to dread from me, sir,” Subyrus remarked. But the man went on with his escape, gabbling in distress.

  “And I. Am I not to dread you?”

  Subyrus moved about, and there Lunaria Vaimian stood, dressed in a vermillion gown that complemented one aspect of the sunset sky, her blonde hair powdered with crushed gilt.

  She stared at Subyrus boldly. When he did not speak, she nodded contemptuously at the dining room.

  “I am not proud,” she announced. “I will take my fee at dinner. I am certain you will grant me that interim between my previous visitor and yourself.”

  The red faded on gold salvers and crystal goblets. Lunaria was wealthy, and she had earned every vaimii.

  They did not converse, she and her guest. Behind a screen, musicians performed love songs with wild and savage rhythms. Servitors came and went with skilfully prepared dishes. Lunaria selected morsels from many plates, but ate frugally. Subyrus touched nothing. Indeed, no one alive could remember ever having seen him eat, or raise more than a token cup to his lips. Occasionally, Lunaria talked, as if to a third person. For example:

  “How solemn the magician is tonight. Though more solemn or less than when he came here before, I cannot say.”

  Subyrus never took his eyes from her. He sat motionless, wonderful, awful, and quite frozen, like some exquisite graveyard moth, crucified by a pin.

  “Are you dead?” Lunaria said to him at length. “Come, do not grieve. I will always be yours for a price.”

  At that he stirred. He placed a casket on the table between them, murmured something. The casket was gone. The vase of blue crystal glimmered softly in the glow of the young candles.

  Lunaria tapped the screen with a silver wand, and the musicians left off their music. In the quiet, they might be heard scrambling thankfully away into the house.

  Lunaria and the magician were alone together, with sorcery.

  “Well,” Lunaria said, “there was a tale in the city today. A blue vase in which thousands of souls are trapped. Souls which can inform of fabulous treasures and unholy deeds of the past. Courtesans who will reveal wicked erotica from antique courts. Devotees of decadent sciences. Geniuses who will create new books and new inventions. If they can be correctly persuaded. Providing one can call them by name.”

  “I could teach you the method,” Subyrus said.

  “Teach me.”

  “And so buy a night of your life?” Subyrus smiled. It was a melancholy though torpid smile. “I mean to have more than that.”

  “A week of nights for such a gift,” Lunaria said swiftly. Her eyes were wide now. “You shall have them.”

  “Yes, I shall. And more than those.”

  He had got up from his chair, and now walked around the table. He halted behind Lunaria’s chair, and when she would have risen, lightly he rested his long fingers against her throat. She did not try to move again.

  The scents of ambergris and musk floated from her hair.

  His obsession. The gnawing and only motive for his existence.

  Obscuring from himself his true desire – the pang of her indifference, her challenge – he saw the road before him, the box in which he might lock her up. Physically, he had possessed her frequently. Such possession no longer mattered. P
ossession of mind, of emotion, of soul had become everything. The joy of actual possession, the intriguing misery of never being able to actually possess her again. And his fingers tightened about the contours of her neck.

  She did not struggle.

  “What will you do?” she whispered.

  “Presently, remove the stopper of the vase. It is already primed to receive another ghost. Whoever expires now in its close vicinity will be drawn in. Into that microcosm where seven thousand souls dwell content. That enchanted world. They come forth haughtily, and retreat gladly. It must be curious and fine. Perhaps you will be happy there.”

  “I never knew you to lie, previously,” Lunaria said. “You said the vase was a gift for me.”

  “It is. It will be your new home. Your eternal home, I imagine.”

  She relaxed in his grip and said no more. She remained some while like this, in a sort of limbo, before she was aware that his hands, rather than blotting out her consciousness, had unaccountably slackened.

  Suddenly, to her bewilderment, Subyrus let her go.

  He went away from her, about the table once more, and stopped, confronting the vase from a different vantage. An extraordinary expression had rearranged his face.

  “Am I blind?” he said, so low she hardly made him out.

  Youth, and of all things, panic, seemed swirling up from the darkened closets behind his eyes. And with those, an intoxication, such as Lunaria had witnessed in him the first night he had seen her, the first night she had refused him.

  She rose and said sternly, “Will you not finish murdering me, my lord?”

  He glanced at her. She was startled. He viewed her with a novel and courteous indifference. Lunaria shrank. What an ultimate threat had not accomplished, this indifference could.

  “I was mistaken,” he said. “I have been too long gazing at leaves, and missed the tree.”

  “No,” she said. “Wait,” as he walked towards the terrace doors, where the brazen dragon grew vague and greenish in a damson twilight.