by Tanith Lee
Every morning she plucked a leaf from the Febrifuga which now grew, sallow and wilting, under the lamps. Hadz took the leaf and ate it, and once, once only, he remarked, “Eve gives me her apple of sin.”
Did he think a transgression was involved in release from pain?
She did not care what he thought.
Bitter honey, black as hair.
Today she had not seen him, not since he got up and left the couch he had that night shared with her. The day passed as always, the hours so slow Coira knew that by now she had lost her mind and become a water-clock, her movements its dead drip-drip.
She was, after all, still confined in her tomb. After the bath they would scent her, the cringing female slaves who never spoke, either. Then they hauled the coffin back on to her shoulders, over her breasts and arms, and closed and belted it bulkily at her waist with a snakelike cord of silver and gold. The robe’s weight soon pushed the girdle to her hips.
Coira sat in a chair, and she thought, I must leave. It doesn’t matter if I die. I must only go away as far as I can until someone catches me and cuts my throat.
But death had tired her so the first time, she could not decide where else to go, or even when to go, or what to wear for travelling—there was nothing to put on but the coffin.
Soon it was the hour of the night meal Hadz maintained in his hall. This was in essence like the feasts and dinners of her father, Draco, or of Tusaj, which she had not frequently attended. Belgra’s court had not really been so much less rowdy or obscene than this one, although there had generally been more women present. Coira took her place here on the bench by the prince’s chair, which tonight he had not yet filled.
Was Hadz her father’s son, as they said? Then he would be her brother. That might account for the physical likeness between them.
She turned this idea in her mind as if it were a colorless stone, looking at it. In fact, she was waiting for Hephaestion to enter the hall, and her life, once more. She did not know it; how could she? She had been doing the same thing at Belgra Demitu and not known. And only her mother’s dementia, and the witless Cirpoz, had caused the meeting to occur. (Her mother? Something about her mother? She could not think what. Let go.)
Just then, a black-haired dwarf stalked into the hall, one of the guards trailing behind him, seeming too tall and all out of proportion. The dwarf looked about, his head lifted keenly, scenting the air, a black wolf.
Coira saw him.
It was as if she saw only what she anticipated. Having been waiting intently, she could not be amazed. But then the shock smote her. No one detected it. She shut her eyes for half an instant. And for an instant longer she was like a bloodless, frozen corpse. Then she blushed—but it might have been some glow of the torches, warming her face and neck. For she was so composed, and did not move.
He met her eyes. One flaring second.
Then he cast his own down. Frowning, lurching, reluctant, he came round the hall, and the guard gave him a push to hasten him, for apparently he was scared now, the halfling, of what his “mistress” would say and do.
If he had had doubts still, which he had not, seeing her, he would have had to dismiss them.
She was like some hallucinatory winter flower. The robe—and she, growing in it, from it, an opalescent stem and bud from the bloody calyx.
And she was herself. The only one he had ever known.
A lifetime (nineteen or twenty years) of cunning and disembling was ingrained in Stormy Hephaestion.
He jumbled around the hall, ringing, looking under doglike brows and lids.
In front of her, he threw himself flat. But in the moment before he did so, he grinned—too fast for any but her, his girl, his Coira, to make it out.
“Is this yours?” asked the guard.
“Oh,” she said. She sounded unenthusiastic.
“I mean, it says it’s your property.”
“Yes,” said Coira, Princess-Queen Persapheh.
“Do you want him tumbled about a little? Reshaped?”
“Oh no.” After another lingering second, Coira said, “He’s not quite right in his head. He means no harm.”
Somewhere in another world, everyone rushed and made sounds, for Prince Hadz was coming in.
In the only real world there was, Coira gazed at Hephaestion.
“Why—”
“Not now, my girl. Shut up your mouth.”
“Yes.”
Then Hephaestion kneeled down there, by her ankles, and bowed low to the prince of the dead and Hell.
But Hadz did not notice him. Hadz stared at Coira.
She rose and Hadz took hold of her.
Coira thought, Now, he will lead me out and have me. And she smiled to welcome this. For anything was now welcome to her, even death again, perhaps.
But Hadz only kissed her forehead and they sat down. And he was there, sitting cross-legged, unseen, at her feet. She felt his weight and strength and heat soak through the coffin-gown and her blood.
“I have a quintessential pleasure for you tonight,” said Hadz.
Yes, he seemed more than ever enthralled, and satisfied.
But she had been given the earth. She said, concentrating, her voice trembling with love, “Thank you, my lord.”
Hadz still did not notice. He expected everything, only becoming startled when not quite everything was there for him. Even pain had been greater for him than for ordinary men. He was among rhe Chosen of God.
“I’d overlooked her. Then Juprum reminded me. Once. one of these. tried to kill me. He isn’t here now. He lasted days. I was inventive. But for her, this is more apt.”
Turning, Hadz reviewed his queen in Hell. She was not the same. She seemed all full of lights. Hadz put his head to one side, measuring her and what he thought of this.
Then Juprum appeared.
“Shall they bring her in, my prince?”
“Yes. Now. Persapheh. who do you think this is?”
Cloudy with love, adrift with love, not really in the hall with him, she said, meekly, “Who, my lord?”
But there were only two people in the world.
She had forgotten, there were three.
IV.
TIME HAD SLIPPED ITS MOORINGS, but most of all for Arpazia. She had passed it, or through it, anyway. She paced round and about. Or she sat on the hard floor, her back against the wall which sounded with the wrinkling pool of forgetting. Eventually, this seemed to be all there was.
She was not ambitious and had nowhere to go, and knew herself ill-equipped either to get out, or to travel anywhere.
Her pain—the slowly healing cuts of the mirror, her inflamed joints—she mostly ignored, as if it had nothing to do with her at all. Yet there was the sense of loss. This seemed familiar as the pain, but far more urgent. She rumaged in her mind, searching for the cause, and how to alleviate it. But it was like a dream. Sometimes she knew her lover was dead and it was this which hurt her worse than any physical distress. Then again, he had been dead for many years. She was accustomed to the agony—which duly faded.
Othertimes, she thought she had lost her child. It had died in her arms, rolling away from her body as she tried to suckle it. This hurt was worse, for although she felt it less keenly, yet she felt it over every surface of her heart and brain. It was not so much loss as an omission. Through it, she mislaid her self.
She knew it was her fault. She had poisoned her child by sorcery. Why, she could not remember.
Once a day, in the dark, some person or other put a dish of food (slops) into the hut. Arpazia ate a little of this muck, sometimes. And twice a woman had come to redress her wounds. But in the beginning they had stitched her back, holding her fast, and at this second visit Arpazia thrust the woman off, slapping her face. Arpazia was the queen, and this maid exacerbated her discomfort. The slave ran away, and Arpazia forgot her. No one bothered after that.
They hate me. Let them beware of me, then.
She bit her nails to points, but t
hey broke.
When the prison door was opened for the last time, she did not guess.
She stood, eyes watering in the torchlight.
There was a knotting in her face, and she did not know, either, it was one more cut from the shattering glass. The light seemed to irritate the seam, and she laid her palm over the area, feeling the swollen, ridged skin with a removed revulsion.
“See, she’s vain, wants to hide her blemishes. Cheer up, old girl. You’re off to a wedding.”
This was what they called such an event, Hadz’s mansion guards. A wedding—the sentence of execution.
None of them touched her. They too found her repellant. She walked in the midst of them, her back almost straight, her head slightly thrust forward.
“Should we cut off that hair? It’s long—may get in the way.”
“No, he’ll like to see it flapping.”
They went through the crooked passageways of the Prince of Hell’s house, and she heard shouting, and blinked again at a flush of stronger light. The wide hall expanded before her and Arpazia walked into it. A memory of Draco’s palace made her lift her head.
There were diners at their meat and drink. But no, this was not Belgra Demitu. Nor her father’s castle in the forest. It was a very black place, fiercely lit.
All the guards had drawn away, and a general silence was settling.
Arpazia stood out on the floor.
She was like a girl; as they had called her, an old girl. She had been Maiden, now she was Crone. The two ends of her existence met in a ring. There was nothing, surely, in between. Her gray hair, thick with filth, trailed all round her. Her scarred face was unrecognizable to anyone who had not, once, known her well.
A man came sauntering up. His garments rained silver and gold, and his black curling mane shone with health. She had seen him before, but where? He was hideous. Arpazia could tell this plainly. He must be some extra Sin, invented by God, to threaten mankind.
“Here you are,” he said. With one finger he tapped her shoulder. “Christ, how she stinks, the old fright. Look at her disgustingness. She’s a witch. And she’s a mother. But an unnatural mother.” His voice grew darker and more full. “Do you speak?”
“Yes,” said Arpazia, the witch-queen.
“Why did you do it? I mean, why try to kill your own child? You will be damned to everlasting night.”
Arpazia glanced about. She said, “Very well.” It was how she had made the unavoidable responses in church.
“What do you think you deserve first?” said Prince Hadz. But he had already decided. “I want to see you dance,” said Hadz. It was a lewd term. She looked at him scornfully. “But even that isn’t enough. Listen to me. I gave her the loveliest parts of her coffin. but I saved the frame for you. You shall have that.”
Arpazia heard the creaking nurse-voice singing in her head.
Aloud, Arpazia murmured, “Snow, wood, blood.”
Hadz struck her lightly across the temple and she fell to the floor. With no alarm he told her, “Don’t try to curse me. I’m God’s. The curse will miss me and go back on you.”
And then Juprum called something, and a couple of the less fastidious ruffians came, and clasped the crone. Another door was flung open. At the end of another walk, rabid with torchlight. an open space was revealed, like a sort of hole.
They were going out of the High Chamber.
As Coira stood up, Hephaestion too got to his feet.
Everyone had heard what Hadz had said, and most had not grasped its significance. They would do what he said, laugh when he did. applaud and obeyse themselves when required. But Hephaestion knew what was going on. He did not need to say to Coira, his girl, That is your mother? She poisoned you? He means to chastize her?
With the reserve of his life of self-control, he had not glanced up into her face.
But then, as they with the rest moved forward after Hadz, the guards and the old woman, (lira’s fingers pressed into Hephaestion’s shoulder.
“Walk, but inside you, keep very still,” he said quietly. “You can’t do a thing for her.”
“I must,” was all she said.
“No. Best love, no. She’ll still be hurt by him, and so will you.”
Coira said, in that remote white voice above his head, so that for one of only a few times he uselessly raged at God, who had built him too low down, “I must.”
Hadz was away with his captive. The others were streaming out into an open yard, with only the mansion walls and the night sky of the cavern roof above. No one paid any real attention to Coira and her dwarf.
Hephaestion knew how she was, once she had decided. What she said, she meant.
He stopped, and for a moment they were stationary, the last of Hadz’s court moving around them and on.
“Then,” Hephaestion said, “I’ll do it. I’ll see to him. I’m practiced, it will be a treat. Then as many others as I’m able. Try to get her away. There must be plenty of nooks to hide in, here.” But he did not believe that, of course.
And Coira said in her turn, “No. No, they’ll kill you. I must do it alone.”
“You’ll die at once. Leave it to me. I’ll do it.”
“No. l.”
The crowd was gone, had left them there, hissing at each other, bent together, she leaning to him and he arching his back, leaning up toward her. (One or two who saw had found it amusing, this cranky little altercation. If she did not hurry, Hadz’s stupid whore would miss the witch’s sentence, and serve her right.)
“I won’t endanger you,” she said. “It isn’t your quarrel.”
“Yes, if it’s yours. My way of it, you and she have some chance.”
“And you have none.”
“If you lose your life, Coira, what do I care what happens to me?”
Her face was like a slender moon. How had he ever thought he did not love her?
“You came back,” she said, as if suddenly understanding.
“Yes. I kept dreaming about you. I knew you were dead—how did I? But then, you lived—”
“Hephaestion—” she said.
A sound rose from the courtyard under the open rock. Rose, rose again and again.
Hephaestion had heard something similar, in the woods, the countryside, and for a moment, though his heart jolted, his attention did not properly respond. But Coira seemed to fly up and away from him into the roof. Then she dashed by him toward the court, her own mouth stretched on noiseless screaming.
Lilca had been hanged. In Draco’s war-camp, they had told the fourteen-year-old Arpazia, making sure she was given the details. She had forgotten them, had named herself Lilca. Now, she recollected.
This was the other dance, not the sexual act, but the kicking act of death at the end of a rope.
Up there, that strut which protruded from the wall, the iron hook, and from it, the iron chain. If the metal had come from the coffin, even Hadz was not certain. Probably not. But some metal had come from it which he would award the poisonous witch.
Juprum had spoken to Hadz, yesterday. “If you hang the old bag, my prince, she’s very lightweight. You’ll need to weigh her down a little, or she’ll scarcely even strangle.” He was often invaluable, Juprum, in such matters.
But it was Hadz who had then announced, “They can tie two pieces of iron off my Persapheh’s coffin, tie them on the hag’s feet. That will anchor her.”
Then he circled about, thinking.
“It’s not sufficient,” he said, discontented.
Juprum said, “Perhaps you mean to be merciful, sir. Like the Church, with such a sinner.”
“Eh? What do you mean—merciful—?”
“She will spend many ages in Hell, but you might ease her time there, in this Hell we have, seeing you are Hell’s Prince. A priest, sir, would try to do that for her. He would cauterize her soul.” Hadz smiled a little. Juprum made all plain, “Attach the metal. Heat it first.”
As she stood in the courtyard, Arpazia might have bee
n rooted to the spot. But she was not, and next a man lifted her right off her feet, and on to a wooden stool. They arranged the noose of iron chain about her throat, and Arpazia put up her hands, which they had not bothered to bind, and felt the noose. She now remembered everything concerning Lilca. And a torrent of fear blanched through her, so all her body changed to liquid and liquid ran from it.
But strengthless with terror, mindless and uncomprehending how she had come to this, she could not even cry out. Not yet.
“Hold her now,” someone said.
She was held. More firmly than before, when they tried to heal her. More firmly than any binding.
The stench of her own loosened bladder and bowels confounded her. She had not a single thought. Already she was only fear.
And through the fog of panic, they were bringing, from a brazier, two red roses.
Used to Juprum’s suggestions and Hadz’s performances, the guards grappled the bony hag effortlessly as she jumped and spasmed in their grip.
Red-hot, held in tongs, the iron plates were thrust against her feet, bent round, and from their own malleable state, adhered.
Then the men let her go. The chain about her throat pulled taut, and sliced and jammed her shrieking, which had been that of a fox in a trap, into retching grunts.
Up high they hoisted her then. She had herself. already kicked away the stool. But as Juprum predicted, she was not heavy enough to break her spine, or strangle instantly.
She hung in the black air, jerking and dancing, while Hadz, and so his court, congratulated and toasted her.
And it was to this that Coira ran out. This which Coira saw, there before her, hoisted high on blackness, the red and white flailing of her grunting dying mother, dancing to death in her gown of urine and dirt and her shoes of cooking red-hot iron.
“Take my hand. Take it. There. I’ve got you now.”
“It hurts me”—she screamed—“hurts me—hurts—”
“No, now you’re safe. Let the pain go out of you. It will.”