by Tanith Lee
She had no fear. She was exalted, glad.
Darkness before her, stone beside her, the falling of scarlet and gold. At length, she saw an ending to every descent: The base of the tower.
It was a doorless block of granite, high as the walls of the house had been. And cut in the stone in letters taller than Jaspre, when she had been in her body, the words NOX INVICTUS.
The butterflies played around these letters, blooming like garnets in the dullness. The golden hair touched them, and so the ground, and poured no more, a trembling fountain that ran away into a thread above, and thus into nothing. Up there, in that fresh, inverted abyss, Jaspre’s body leaned from its window, no longer to be seen.
About the base of the tower, a plain of smooth and empty rock glided away and away, also into an inchoate nothingness that was its only horizon.
Jaspre knew only gladness. Incorporeal and weightless as the winged creatures in their dance, she danced with them. Caught in a spiral of heatless laval fire, she beheld another thing, and paused transfixed.
On the horizon of nothingness, many days’ journey as it seemed from the tower, a flicker of blue luster had evolved. And, in a few seconds, drew nearer. And in a few seconds more, much nearer.
As the light began to swell, Jaspre saw that it was not light at all, but the essence of the dark given clarity, unlight, more sumptuous, more lambent than any luminence of the world’s.
From the brilliancy, bringing it, like great wings folded about him, a figure presently came.
He was like some picture from one of her books, animate, and imbued with all the qualities of life, and with some other thing which was not life at all, but more, perhaps, than life. He rode a horse blacker than the blackest material the earth was capable of, blacker than ebony, sable or jet. But its mane and tail were of an iridescent blueness, and it was accoutered in a blue and silver hail of sparkling stuffs, bells, gems. He, too, was garbed in the same black blackness as the flesh of the horse, as if he had stepped from some Avernal lake and its waters clung to him, becoming satin, and metal. His hair was the blackest thing of all. His face—but as he came closer, he turned his head. Some shadow then, the curling curtain of the hair, hid all his features from her. She did not need to see them. She knew they were the features of the statue in the insularium.
He had ridden now to the spot where the fountain of hair came down. The horse stopped at once. And he, the god-demon she was to call Angemal, stretched out one hand gloved in silvery mail and with one huge ring upon it, a fiery ring of an apricot color, the stone which was her name. He touched the golden rope of her hair with his fingers. And immediately Jaspre saw, without amazement, the hair twisted and refashioned itself. It became a ladder of silk—
She heard him laugh, then, a low sound, scarcely audible, musical as song and colder than frozen iron. Then, he was gone. It was not that he vanished. He was; he was not.
Jaspre felt a desolation and an agony, as if her psychic fibers tore and frayed at their insubstantial roots. Her spiritual sight went out, and in that fading, she glimpsed the butterflies raining like blood on the plain, while above her the golden hair was burning, shriveling, blowing away; black butterflies where there had been red. Even her soul, witnessing this, seemed to shrivel also, and to die.
* * * *
Jaspre opened her eyes. She lay on the floor of the insularium. The chandelier smoldered, the color of thunder, most of its candles extinguished, and the woman bent close. For the only time in all their acquaintance, Jaspre beheld a glaze of ghostly excitement on my lady’s face, but it was almost instantly spent, or hidden.
“And what did you see?”
“I saw—a tower,” Jaspre faltered. She was weak, and dazzled by the feeble light. Her left wrist, bound tightly with cloth, hurt her.
“Yes. A tower. What else?”
Jaspre’s eyes closed of themselves. The woman leaned nearer and she whispered, “Speak, or I shall be angry. What else?”
“I saw—red butterflies, and my hair falling to the rock like a shower of gold. I never knew my hair would shine and blaze.… Oh, my lady, I am so weary.”
“Speak. Or I shall strike you.”
Jaspre’s eyes opened wide. She was shocked and afraid. Never before had she been threatened—there had been no need.
“I—” Jaspre sought for words, found them, “I left my body and drifted down the tower to the plain beneath. There a man came, all in black, riding a black horse.”
“And was it he?”
“I think that it was. But he turned aside. And when he touched the rope of hair it became a silken ladder, and he laughed. Then my hair burnt and charred, and he was gone.”
Jaspre, barely conscious that she did so, raised her hands, the left with pain and stiffness, and discovered her hair and that it was not charred, but whole, lying in a long swath all about her. Though it was not so long as it had been when she dreamed of it, and maybe not so golden.
The woman had gone away from her. In the darkest corner of the room she sat, rigid, silent. And then she said, “You have lain there enough. Dress. Go to your apartment.” And her voice was like a frost.
Jaspre rose. Her sight clouded. She took up her clothes.
“Have I displeased you, my lady?”
“It is your master you have displeased, the princely lord Angemal. For he did not find you acceptable, it seems.”
Jaspre wept as she clad herself in the gleaming garments which no longer gleamed.
“Why?” she murmured. “What have I done?”
“I do not know. You were reared to please him. A child of light consenting to the shadow. It should have delighted him, master of ironies that he is. But the emblem of the vision is blatant. He rejected you, and therefore the way into the world whereby he might have manifested.”
Jaspre wept soundlessly, her heart, her spirit, breaking.
“Go,” hissed the woman.
Jaspre ran soundlessly away.
After a while, the woman came to her feet. She returned across the chamber and regarded the opened Pentacle, the bowl of blood.
“Do you deny me still?” she asked. “Or do you only make a test of me? You shall have more. You shall have all of her, as I vowed, the supreme gift, the willing sacrifice of a human life. She will die for you with ecstasy and joy, in all her beauty, virgin, innocent, and wise. As I have caused her to be, a matchless unplucked flower set down upon your altar. Have I not devoted the sum of my energies to your service? You know I hunger for the power that only you can deliver. You know. But you will bargain, as in the days of the First Earth. Yes, you shall have more, much more.”
THREE
The moon rose late upon the walled garden. It hollowed the sky above to a milky blueness, and touched the formal walks below with dainty traceries like lace, and in the wilder grottoes found out the pale limbs of nymph’s and the mirrors of water. Passing the sundial, making of it a moon-dial, the moon let fall a long veil on to a lawn hedged by the briers of a savage shrubbery, and so found Jaspre too. She sat upon the ground. Her hands, which had been dishes for her tears, now lay as if slain in her lap. Her eyes were dry, her heart a desert.
Her flight had brought her here, close to the outer wall, and she had glimpsed above it those claws of the blasted trees which were all she had ever seen of the outer world. A waste wilderness must lie beyond the wall. And now, her life was such a wilderness. She could not mourn. She could no longer weep. Not grasping the essence of annihilation, she wished only to cease, to be no more, as if sunk in some profound sleep devoid of wakening.
It was unnecessary for her to search about herself. Even when the moon blushed through the garden, there was, for Jaspre’s desolation, nothing to gaze on. And then some dormant nerve, rousing in spite of her, caused her to glance, to see the lawn, the dense shrubbery, an
d, seated between the two, the still shape that was neither plant nor statue.
Jaspre’s hands revived and sprang together. She started up, young enough to experience terror even in her misery. But the shape ascended with her, steeped in moonlight. So she saw—not image, not dream—but an actual man, and scarcely seven paces away. His unknown features were handsome, even in the mezzotint of the moon, though drained by the moon as if seen through a fine gauze. His hair looked dark, his eyes brilliant. His clothes were quite alien to her, being classically functional—the wear of a woodsman or a hunter from one of her painted books.
She said nothing. Her sheer innocence did not provide for her the ready suspicion and the outcry of another. Yet she feared, feared till he spoke. And then his voice lulled her by its gentleness, by the curious words he offered.
“Sweet girl, your hair, which is like the sun by day, becomes the moon by night.”
“How do you know me?” Jaspre asked, wonder easing her anxiety as anxiety had eased her despair.
“I do not know you. The witch’s house is avoided. But once, I came through the wood, and heard melody and singing. It was not she. A creeper robes the wall. I climbed it. I saw you. I see you now. But know you I do not.”
Jaspre turned a little way, toward the distant house from which the wide length of the garden separated her. It was an intuitive response, to evade him. And yet it was the house she now wished to evade, and all remembered and familiar things, tainted by her failure, the harsh and hating phrases of the woman this man named “the witch.” She had flown here, and could not fly back into such dismal shelter. Entrapped, she shuddered. She had been kept from her own kind. She guessed this was a crime—to converse with a man. She had been offered to a god. Who had refused her. A fresh dawn of pain broke on her, a fresh river of tears.
“Why do you weep?” the man murmured. He had drawn closer and though she had turned from him, she did not move away. “Do you fear me so very greatly?”
“No,” she said. Her tears were once more ceaseless.
“Is it then that hag who mistreats you?”
“I am worthless,” said Jaspre. “I desire only to die.”
“You are lovely,” he said. “You must live.”
“I was born for one purpose, and cannot hope for it.”
“What strange purpose can that have been?”
Her tongue could not render all his titles, yet: “A lord,” she sobbed, snared by the unique and final easement of confession, confiding. “A prince of a prince—and he does not want me. I am vile to him.”
“He told you this?”
“My lady told me it was so.”
His voice was already murmuring at her ear, and now his arm slid around her. In her grief and wretchedness she leaned against him, aware this was some further sin, yet unable to deny herself the comfort of it.
“Silver maiden,” he said, and held her so she might rest “Say I am a prince. Will you take me as your lord instead?” But Jaspre, truthful in her naïveté, answered quietly,
“You are not a prince.”
“Yes,” he said, and laughed. His laugh was like warm music, and she recalled that other laughter in her dream, so terrible, so cold, and the destructive icy flame that leapt from it. “These are merely the clothes I wander in. Trust me, I have finery, I have horses flowered in metal and jewels. I have a kingdom, and rule there.”
“No,” she said, but she laid her head against his shoulder.
He smiled. His lips found her hair, her forehead, eyelids, lashes, and her tears ended.
“Will you take me, then, for myself alone?”
“Take you for yourself?” she whispered.
“As love, as lord. Your prince, if no other’s, gorgeous Jaspre?”
“How do you know my name?”
“I heard her call you, the hag in the house.”
Jaspre raised her eyes. She beheld him again, more sufficiently now. Remotely, the darkness of his hair calmed her, a reminiscence. And it seemed to her that, although he was not the statue, nor a god, yet he was more wonderful than the phantom she had been given to, his eyes like stars, his face like an angel’s—and though she had been allowed her life that she should serve one alone, and that the demon prince Angemal, yet it came to her all at once that to love him had been her error. Then, the man who stood with her, holding her in his strong arms, warming and soothing her with his nearness and his own human beauty, kissed her mouth. The kiss was like no other touch, no other sensation ever before felt, or looked for. It seemed to her indeed she slept and had passed thereby into some other world. Or that, for the very first, she had awakened.
From the depths of this extraordinary state, as if beneath water, she heard him say, “You are imprisoned here. Come with me, I will release you from your jail.”
Metaphysically she struggled then, with everything, and with herself. And was brought at last to say: “No. I may not leave this place.”
“Yes. You may, you shall.”
Jaspre hung her head, the comprehension of the wrong she did now awesome, almost pleasing, yet dreadful and to be dreaded.
And in that moment flame burst like lightning from the far-off shadow of the house. A lamp had been kindled in Jaspre’s apartment.
“She searches for you,” he said. “Go in to her. Tomorrow, at moonrise, return to this spot. You will find me here.”
“No, I shall not return.”
“It is a charm I set on you.”
“No. No.”
“I will draw you back to me. You shall see. By a chain of stars.”
“No.”
A footstep clacked upon a path.
His arms let her free, and Jaspre moved toward the footstep like a clockwork thing. Deception was new to her, a sword which cut her hands. She did not look back, but beyond the clouded shrubbery, beyond a hedge, a walk, a tree with the moon like a white fruit in its branches, his voice stole once again to her ear, a moth of sound, no more, that replied only: Yes.
The woman stood, black on the lighted window, one foot on the paving which led into the garden, waiting. She spoke to Jaspre, toneless now, and cool, no longer harsh. There was in this mode a sort of forgiveness, a promise of leniency. Conjured before Jaspre’s dazzled eyes, the image of Angemal in his black garments formed, and faded. The unknown lover’s mortal kisses lingered on her skin.
* * * *
The world was round and moved upon its axis, so the young girl knew quite well from her studies. The stars were fixed, it was the Earth which traveled, save for those wandering errants, the planets, which came and went on their own invisible roads across the dusks of morning and of evening and the enormous night of the outer spaces, which held everything. And yet, how contrary perception, which knew as well, and better, that the sun, the moon, the stars arose and set. The earth was flat beneath a dome of ether which flooded with light or dark only as the fire of the sun illumined it or went out.
And so with Jaspre’s world, which had become two things: The impossible, which was reality, the reality which was impossible.
The witch’s servant and doll, pressed now into rituals of fast and trance, into kneelings upon stone, crystals told like a rosary in her hands, incantations hymned, a pilgrimage along the inner path to him, the god of shadows, the prince of darknesses. Perfection to be made more perfect, fineness to be refined, until acceptable, until irresistible. This, the world as it was. And in the garden, the other earth, the landscape of truth growing every second more actual, making all else a ghost, and yet never to be realized. This, the deception, the mirage.
They walked under the black leaves, the silver branches. They leaned together on pillows of moss, only their hands linked, now and then their lips brushing, but as the leaves brushed overhead, like children. His patience in all seduction was inexh
austible, this stranger from beyond the wall. He spoke of the world’s wonders, of seas and citadels, mountains, markets, the swarms of mankind, urging her to seek them with him. He mentioned a towered city and she knew he lied when he seemed to say that it was his. “I will not come away with you,” she said. “Tomorrow, do not wait for me here.” But always he returned, and Jaspre also. She came to gaze on him, to gaze and gaze, entranced by his features, the graceful gestures which he made. These trances were unlike the trances of the insularium. She fasted only in his absence. Like a certain flower, her love died in one area, sprang upward in another. To Jaspre now he was more handsome than the dream of Angemal. She worshiped at a human altar. The inspiration of the witch’s god—Ahriman, Asmodeus, Bel, Satan—fell from her like charcoaled petals, and seemed done.
She felt no danger. Nor it seemed did her lover. His constant pleas, disciplined and never actually pleading, that she should escape with him at once, always now this night, this, or this, it had no slightest savor of panic. It seemed he thought time ever on his side, eternity before them in which he might persuade, in which she could decide.
And she, trained like a vine to the surface of her passions, heights but not depths, beheld all as it was, developing upon it her longings and her theme. She never checked at the sweep of a bird’s wing over the moon, a shimmer of taloned briers, rustling among grasses. She had no guilt, no apprehension. She had a distant fear, but not of any subtle thing. She seemed to sense the abyss of the tower descending before her, and the great fall she must accomplish, and the ultimate rejection, no longer despair, but a terror past enduring. Yet, it was to come. It was the earth-turning sunset, moon-set. A fact that all evidence perceptible assured her was not so.
* * * *
“How old are you, Jaspre?” the woman asked.
“I am fifteen years of age, my lady.”