The Secret Book of Paradys

by Tanith Lee

  What could there be in this dark like so many others, which set the hairs electrically upright along the body?

  Haninuh tensed, and leaned slightly forward, his hands upon the uprights of the window. Keen-eyed, he had seen something moving, away along the south-west scallops of the City roofs. This in itself was not bizarre. A cat might be hunting there, or a robber. And yet something in the manner of the movement did not suggest either feline or man.

  Haninuh the observer saw again a curious flapping lunge, like the wing-beat of some huge raptorial bird. Of too large a size –

  And whatever went about there in the night was capable, it seemed, of running up stonework, folding itself over housetops, and sliding to the street below like water flowing from a jar.

  Haninuh was abruptly very glad he had sent the child to her bed.

  Half-unconsciously he murmured, “From the visions of the night, when deep sleep sinks on men, fear came on me which made my bones to shake, and then a spirit passed before me and the hair of my flesh stood up –”

  Haninuh fell silent. The apparition had poured suddenly from view.

  There was then a long second of the sort in which, as they said, death might pass over; the space between two breaths.

  But then, from the black hollows of the City there tore a frightful wail, a wavering shriek so truly appalling that for a moment the Jew doubted his ears.

  The night seemed splintered, and dropped back in pieces. An abysmal quiet staunched the wound of the single cry.

  Every nerve a quill, Haninuh poised to see a hundred windows lighted, a hundred people dash out on the streets.

  Nothing occurred.

  Like a thrown flint, the grisly screech had gone without a trace into the swamp of night.

  If any others marked it they did not act.

  Only far off a dog or two howled, nearby a rat scuttled. Presently the notes of Laude drifted from a convent by the quays. The stars swung noiseless overhead.

  Some drunkard has been throttled in an alley, or some old score settled with a knife. One had witnessed nothing.

  The Jew turned from his watch, listening intently now to be sure his own house stayed peaceful. It did. One must be grateful for that. For the rest, it was the world’s way.

  The vice which tuned and strummed the night had not let go, but only slackened somewhat. Yet Haninuh was weary. Spared a revelation, he could descend now and sleep, as a soldier slept between his watches.

  “Blessed be the Lord at our lying down and blessed be He at our rising. Into Thy hand I commend me, my redeemer, O God.”

  Next morning, Haninuh awakened with a feeling of oppression. This did not surprise him, nor was it due to lack of sleep. He spoke a prayer of thanks giving for the new day; in the house above he heard the beaded laughter of his child.

  Having some business near the upper markets, Haninuh went in that direction, southwesterly. The route shortly took him into a square with a public fountain. A crowd was gathering here, jostling and exclaiming, and it was impossible to proceed.

  “What is the matter?” Haninuh asked of a man in the crowd that he knew, a cobbler by trade.

  The cobbler turned to him hotly and said, “Something happened during the night. A murder in the gate of the tanners’ yard. An apprentice found the body not an hour ago.”

  “There are frequent murders in the City,” remarked the Jew.

  “Just exactly. But not like this.”

  “Why, what is its novelty? Murder is murder.”

  The cobbler was about to speak when a party of the Duke’s soldiers rode into the square and breached the crowd.

  Unable to go by, or to get closer, Haninuh waited impassively.

  A stillness was settling. The soldiers had grouped at the tanners’ gate. Suddenly a woman cried out wildly: “Oh! Oh sweet Jesus!” And there was a small commotion as if perhaps she had fainted.

  Rumour ran like a current back through the crowd. Men mouthed it in each other’s faces. It came to the cobbler and to the Jew. “The throat and eyes all gone.”

  “That’s what I heard,” said the cobbler, complacently afraid.

  “What does it mean?” said Haninuh.

  “Some animal with the madness must have done it,” said the cobbler, “ripped out the lad’s eyes and his throat – and the whole body’s in ribbons, and the entrails expressed. He was a poor weaver’s assistant coming late from his work.”

  “Did nobody hear his cries?”

  “No. None at all. A street woman said she thought she heard a yell, between the second and third hour. But one cry can mean anything, even enjoyment, begging your pardon, sir Jew. Then supposedly if it had him by the throat, he couldn’t cry again.”

  Another man close by, in the apron of the tannery, morosely said, “They’ll want to push the blame on us. We’ve a feud with the weavers’ guild.”

  Yet another man said, “Only a monster could make such injuries, a unicorn, or a tiger.”

  Soon the body had been covered and removed. The Duke’s soldiers grimly warned the crowd to disperse.

  Able to continue on his way, the Jew noticed, under the tanners” gate (the place at which, last night, he had watched the bird-like thing pour down the wall) a black slur on the cobbles, and trampled in it, one pointed, broken shoe.

  Violent death, as Haninuh had remarked, was not unusual in the City. Many mornings carried a small cargo of corpses along the river; the alleys of the lower bank were often paved with cold flesh.

  Even so, this other death, which thereafter began to be a feature of the nights of Paradys, though frequently unreported, undiscovered until its unique signs had been obliterated – this death was a different death. It was a rending, debauched death. It bore an older mark.

  While locks and bars were checked on and enhanced in many a house, the house of the Jew acquired (they said, those that spoke of him) less obvious safeguards. For example, from the street had been noted some bunches of herbs hanging in the narrow lower windows. For the Hermes at the door, it was freshly cleansed, and had been anointed, too, in a pagan way.

  The City, where it knew, discussed these matters.

  Otherwise Paradys went about its business, as it had always done. As do all cities, like ancient beasts, which, on a strong soiled hide, only idly scratch the little embers of disease.

  A month had moved over the calendar and was gone. The Jew walked up into the Scholars’ Quarter of the City, along the canals of aged libraries, and by the new university. He went to visit an elderly rabbi, a black-robed old lion, who dwelled near the river.

  They sat together in a low-ceilinged room that smelled of books.

  “And you tell me you watch every night, Haninuh, from your roof?”

  “Every night without fail. Sometimes I detect some disturbance. Never the relevant one. I’ve seen nothing since the first night. And on that night I do believe I saw a thing, a thing I can barely describe, let alone envisage.”

  “Is it not,” inquired the other, “dangerous for you to watch in this manner? Do you have, I think, a child in the house, a daughter of your handmaid who is dead?”

  “My Ruquel is well-protected. I’ve seen to that above all else, by forms you know I can command.”

  “Ah, then. But for yourself?”

  “This is strange,” said Haninuh. “There is that in my blood which recognises this thing as a natural foe. The memory of our forefathers in me contains some glimpse of it, so I reckon now. And have been attempting, from scrolls and parchments I possess, to learn the source.”

  “Now I will relate,” said the old rabbi, “a story of a recent death among the gentiles here. Perhaps you will not have heard of it, for the affair is smothered.”

  He then regaled Haninuh with this:

  A young girl of good family, closely kept, had let slip to her maid that a gallant lover had begun to court her. He must have seen her on her way to Mass, for this was one of the few times she was allowed from the house. He approached near midn
ight and somehow climbed up the wall, perhaps by means of the ivy which grew there. Then he attracted her attention by scratching on the shutter. Naturally, the damsel did not go to the window, but, having an imagination, she had already decided on the cause of the nocturnal visitation. Sure enough next morning she found, on opening the shutter, a scrap of paper fixed there with a thorn. Some ill-scrawled words of love (they were later seen by others) and a line of poor poetry, confirmed her in her triumph.

  The maid, another silly girl, resolved to help her mistress in the interesting adventure. She spied from a lower window the next night. Sure enough, the ardent lover again climbed to the upper window, and getting no reply, except maybe a stifled giggle, left again a slip of paper with a couplet. The maid for her part was able to attest the suitor was most agile, though rather odd in his mode of ascent. For the rest, she had made out the slim figure of a young man in a cloak who, for his protection, seemed to be wearing some kind of eccentric mask. Later too, in the hideous aftermath when she was called to account, the maid detailed this mask more fully as that of a peculiar bird.

  For several nights more, the fun and games went on. Until at last, moved beyond reason, the damsel dared to open the shutters, hoping for a look at her love.

  Ghastly shrieks and a noise like blows brought the entire household to her chamber door. Unfortunately it had been bolted from inside.

  The girl’s two brothers and an uncle put their shoulders to the obstacle, urged on by the most terrible sounds from within. To their shouts, the girl seemed unable to respond. She screamed ceaselessly, as the uncle subsequently averred, like a woman he had once beheld racked for witchcraft. Until abruptly all noises finished.

  The door gave in a rush, and the men of the house burst forward into the room.

  The window stood wide and empty. Nothing was there, save that there were some black stains and scratches on the wood of the frame. Below and about nothing was visible in the night, except for three of the City watch who had come running at the outcry, yet not in time.

  At the chamber’s centre lay a fearful sight. The girl had paid dearly for her foolishness.

  The wounds were unbelievable, though of the usual type now known, in the subfusc of Paradys, as relating to the rending, debauched death at work there. Her throat was torn out, her eyes … there were great incisions in her belly, although interruption had prevented a disembowelling. Quantities of her hair had also been ripped from her head, and were strewn about. Scratches, like those on the wooden window-frame, scored her white throat and breasts. It was presently discovered that, amidst this carnage, an attempt too had been made to violate the girl. But being a virgin, she had proved difficult, and her assailant had not had space to complete the rape.

  Now all this in itself was bad enough (though not so much worse than some twenty other like murders current in the City). But the stricken family was next advised by agents of the Duke, that they should not make public either their loss or their quest for vengeance. It was to be given out the girl died of a fever. In return for this favours might be anticipated.

  The important houses, though apt to feud with each other, were united in aristocratic respect of Ducal prerogatives. The family, that of Lyrecourt, did as bidden.

  It was further believed that the girl’s body was burnt rather than buried, a priest counselling cremation. The corpse, which seemed to have been attacked by a giant bird, was accordingly rendered into ashes.

  “It is thought, too,” added the old man, “that the corpses of all females assaulted and slain by the creature, have also been incinerated.”

  Haninuh sat brooding. At length he replied:

  “There is more to be feared of it than death only?”

  “So it seems.” The rabbi laid his hands upon a little book of black leather, with a lock of damascine steel. “Myself, I have been searching for this demon. Though I lack the courage to look for it in the dark, there are other darknesses. After some trouble, I found this volume, which is a fragment of a larger work sometimes called The Book of the Night.” And saying this, he pushed the book across the table to Haninuh.

  On the black cover was embossed in silver the Solomonic Seal, and in one corner, a menorah, also in silver.

  “Here is the key, Haninuh. Take it away with you, and read the passage I have marked. But no other. I can trust you in that.”

  Haninuh assured the rabbi that he might.

  Soon they parted, and with the black book fastened into his sleeve, Haninuh went back across the City to his house.

  It was in a small chamber set off from his cubicle of study that Haninuh unlocked the book. The door was shut on him. There was no window, and the space was illumined by a single candle of honey-wax.

  When he had cleaved the book, with much care, at the place where a flat wand of bone divided it, a faint light seemed exuded from the vellum, and then to suspend itself upon the page.

  The text was on the left side Hebraic, and on the right in Latin. Haninuh read, comparing each text with the other as he did so.

  “There was a man in the fort at Par Dis, at about the time the seven-hilled city of the Romans, and all their empire, fell. He was a soldier, a centurion, having charge of a cohort, and from Roman lands. And at his death, he left his arms and honours in the temple of Mars here, marked for him Re Va, which temple being excavated, has preserved them in the City with many others.

  “Now this soldier, after some misfortune, had recourse to an amulet said to have been fashioned in Khem.” (“Aegyptus” said the Latin.) “However, the amulet had its origin in the country of the Assyrians, possibly at the City Calah, in the days before David was King in Israel.

  “Now the Assyrians worshipped all manner of idols, and were beset by all the races of the demons. The amulet took its power from just such a being, an utuk. Its shape was graven on the jewel of the amulet, and was that of a man, but having claws upon the feet and fingers, and the head and beak of a bird of prey.

  “At first the Roman found that the amulet was helpful to him. But then, it seemed to draw away his strength, while the demon began to haunt him. At last he assayed riddance of the article, but through this very means was enslaved by it for ever. Thereafter his line was polluted by the demon, which was wont to manifest itself among his descendants here in Paradys. Its method was this, that it was carried in the semen of the male and the blood of the female, in the way of some poisons or diseases. And as with disease, a proportion would prove to have a natural resistance to the effects of the pest. Therefore, generations might pass without any sign, though all were tainted, until one would be born who was vulnerable, in whom the utuk could get a hold. For the utuk was given its life through metamorphosis and shape-changing. The woman who was susceptible would birth a son or daughter infected by this evil, most often the former. That man was then, once grown, capable both of transmuting into the form of the utuk, and, through his seed, causing other women to conceive a similar miscreation. In this case, tainted kin, or not, all women were impressible. It has been recorded, there are further permutations to this generative transfer at the injection of seed, but no document had been discovered regarding them.

  “The utuk is in itself a terrible thing, a ravening thing, which craves human life in its form, and more sensually in a robbery of blood and flesh. It is an Eater, a Devourer.

  “Though magical safeguards are of protective use, the utuk itself, while possessed of a human host, is impervious. For the carrier may be killed through any normal means, at which the demon makes its escape by whatever route is to hand, into another host, for an example in his infection by the spilled blood. Where no transference is likely, that aspect of the demon may be considered extinct, providing the body of the carrier is burned and the ashes laid. However, though every individual manifestation of the demon be destroyed, in its poisonous disease-like form, it remains inherent in that kindred it has afflicted. Who are by name the Vuscarii.

  “For the amulet itself, it is lost. The hue of i
t is said to have changed, as do particular jewels when heated, or exposed to wear. This tint, the shade of the jewel as it was or has become, is believed to offer warning through a colour of the eyes of those contaminated.”

  Haninuh, having gained the end of the text, replaced the bone marker, shut up the book, and locked it.

  As he did this, the candle flickered wildly and would have gone out, but the Jew spoke at it a Word, and the Word stayed the candle flame, which burned up straight and still once more.

  It was night, and there was no moon.

  Haninuh paused at the threshold of his daughter’s apartment. She had been washed in a little bath of lettuce enamel, and, her prayers said, got into her bed with her wooden doll and her striped cat. There all three were, staring at him clear-eyed, doll, cat and child.

  “And are you ready for sleep, Ruquel?”

  “Yes, father,” she answered, and put her doll into the sheets with its tow head on the pillow, while the cat purred and kneaded the covers.

  “Have the bad dreams stopped, little girl?”

  “Oh yes, since you put the water dishes out to catch them.”

  “You must tell me if you dream anything bad again.”

  Ruquel smiled. “I say to her,” she nodded at the cat, “we’re safe. You won’t let anything hurt us. Though she was frightened when we had the dream. But not now.”

  When he had kissed all three goodnight, as was obligatory, wood lips, soft lips, fur cheek, Haninuh climbed up the house to the roof pavilion.

  Blackness hung over Paradys, the book of night open randomly at the darkest page.

  As usual Haninuh performed three rituals, and uttered some prayers which, upon white deserts and obsidian mountains, had long ago invoked the benign forces of fierce angels.

  In just such centuries, the Jews had kept vigil against the hordes of Assyria. They had fought with them sword-to-sword under skies of flying arrows. The wolf-like Assyrians, whose cities were lilies of a river bank, had riven Israel. And Israel had brought down upon them the bolts of the one true terrible limitless God. Until the people angered Him, and He turned from them, and then the Assyrians leapt at the throat of Israel … it was all to do again.