The Sheri S. Tepper eBook Collection

by Sheri S. Tepper

  ‘You will conduct yourself appropriately,’ replied the Magus. ‘This is a kinswoman. Even if she were not, there are indulgences inappropriate to a Magus!’

  And another voice, sibilant, hissing, ‘This is a complication we do not need at this time. This is foolishness, kinswoman or not. Be done.’

  ‘She is fair,’ sang the man to himself, not listening to the voices. The wine was diluting their message, blurring their advice. ‘Fair. Lithe and lovely, dark of hair and pale of skin, curved as a warrior’s bow is curved, straight as his arrow is straight. A warrior’s trophy! A warrior’s prize!’

  ‘A brigand’s booty. A robber’s spoils,’ threatened the Magus.

  ‘A poacher’s trap,’ hissed the voice of dissent.

  ‘A lover’s prize,’ the man amended, bending over his plate in a sudden access of warmth. He had not meant to say that. He had not used the word to himself for almost twenty years, not since he was nineteen and thought himself dying because someone else had died, died untimely, unforgivably. He shut down the voices, apprehensive of the end of their colloquy. The food gave him something else to think about, but it led him into the trap once more. He looked up to see Marianne’s lips curved to accept the edge of the glass, curved as though in a kiss, and his hands trembled.

  ‘Come now, Makr Avehl,’ he said to himself. ‘You are not a schoolboy any longer. You are not a lascivious youth, carried willy-nilly on naïve curiosity’s back, like Europa on the bull, tormented by lust into abandonment of all sense. Come, come. Let us talk of something else.’

  ‘Did you really like the pictures I brought you?’ he asked, seeing a well-trained hand slip the empty plate away from before him to replace it with another, noticing also that Marianne’s glass was being refilled. His own was almost untouched.

  She did not answer at once, being occupied with napkin and glass. ‘That was duck,’ she said happily. ‘Lovely duck. All bits and pieces with swadges of truffle. I didn’t know Willard’s was capable of that…’

  He did not tell her that the pâté had been provided earlier, that Willard’s was not capable of that, that no restaurant within five hundred miles was capable of that except the one which had provided the pâté to his order. ‘The pictures?’ he prompted.

  ‘The pictures. Well, the one of the fish is marvelous. One has a sense of the fish rising, and because the air above and the water below are all one, it is almost as though it could go on rising upward, forever. Like a balloon.’

  Makr Avehl, who had not thought of this, was much taken with the feeling. ‘Exaltation?’

  ‘Yes. The feeling that one could go on up and up forever, but one would not need to. The surface is very nice, too. Well, I liked that one. The other one was more difficult. The young women are in the street, alone, but they are not threatened at all. There are lights around, in the house – which must be the house they live in – where people are waiting for them. Nothing horrible is coming. It’s a special evening, and the girls are setting lights along the streets. They do that in Mexico, don’t they? Set lights along the streets? Candles, in bags of sand? A kind of ritual in which the safe, lighted way is shown, I think. And that’s the way it feels, a safe, lighted way.’

  ‘Luminous,’ he suggested.

  She considered this over a spoonful of lobster bisque, turning the idea with the other flavors on her tongue. ‘Not so much luminous as illuminated. Things which could be threatening or frightening are lighted up, made harmless, perhaps even shown to be attractive. That’s what one wants, after all, to have the monsters shown to be nothing but paper cut-outs, or shadows, or humped bushes which the light will show to be full of flowers.’

  He nodded. ‘It’s unfortunate the other group of things had such an unpleasant feel to it. Certain groupings can have that quality of foreboding or threat. I remember a particular place in the forest of Alphenlicht, trees, stones, some large leafed plants with waxy blooms. Taken individually, the trees are only trees. The stones are interesting shapes, taken each by each, and the plants are found in many boggy parts of the mountains. Taken as a whole, however, this particular clearing among the stones with the trees brooding above has a quality of menace.’

  He shook his head, keeping to himself the question as to what kind of knowledge or study would have stimulated a person – any person – to have chosen the particular group of things he had found in the box. The knowledge was one matter but, in addition, what motivation would one have had? These questions were not merely interesting but compelling. He was most curious about the sly vileness in which he had given her the things one at a time, singly, so that her spirit would be led to accept them individually rather than take warning at the cumulative effect.

  Nonetheless, she had taken warning. Which told him something more about her to make his lustful self pause. There was heritage here, the heritage of the Magi. ‘With whom,’ advised the Magus within, ‘it is wise not to trifle.’

  He pursued this question. ‘You didn’t like the things Harvey gave you. Did you tell me why?’

  She shrugged, spooning up the last of her bisque, sorry there was not more of it, so relaxed by the wine that she did not mind answering. ‘They made me feel slimy. Dirty. Not clean dirt, but sewer dirt. I’ve never been in a sewer, but I can imagine.’ She put her spoon down with regret. ‘The naked girl was the worst. That one made me angry. She was so … sacrificial.’

  ‘Anger,’ he mused, nodding once more to the hovering waiter. ‘I have often wondered why anger is considered by some Western religions to be a sin. It is such a marvelous protection against evil.’ He examined her face, thinking of an old proverb of his people, often used to define perspicacity of a certain type: He can recognize the devil by his breathing. He thought it interesting that Marianne could recognize the devil by its breathing, and he wondered who the devil was. Well, he should not be too quick to identify.

  ‘The reason you found them unpleasant probably doesn’t matter. We’ve taken care of it. It’s likely that your brother would not even know the difference between the things he gave you and the substitutions I have made. He would undoubtedly be distressed to learn he had caused you a moment’s apprehension. There is certainly no reason to mention it to him.’

  Marianne had had no intention of mentioning it. ‘You think I felt as I did about the things merely because Harvey gave them to me? That seems a little simplistic.’

  ‘It’s probably as good an explanation as we are going to get.’ He laughed with a good pretense of humor, watching as the second set of wine glasses were refilled. They would continue with the Trockenbeerenauslese until dessert. He had chosen it for her, thinking she would prefer it, and was now regretful that he had not realized she would appreciate something better. Still, it was a very fine wine, if not a preeminent one, and her glass was being refilled for the third time. Her face was flushed and happy, and she played idly with her fork, waiting for the salad. He went on, putting an end to the subject, ‘I suggest any further presents from your half brother be put in storage somewhere. Often we wish to be exorcised of demons we ourselves have allowed house room. That is an Alphenlicht saying, one my sister is very fond of.’

  ‘I suppose she means demons of memory,’ said Marianne in an untroubled voice. ‘Of guilt, of vengeance. Things we dwell on instead of forgetting.’ In that moment, she felt she would not be bothered by such things again.

  He cursed at himself, not letting it show. The Box had been no minor assault. She should be warned. Who was he to give her these platitudes instead of the harsh warning which was probably required? If he were to be true to his own conscience, he would explore the root of that corruption, find the cause, help her arrange a defense against it rather than deal her a few proverbs to placate her sense of danger. However, there was no way to do that without frightening her, and tonight was not the time, not the place, not with her glowing face across from him, candlelit, soft and accepting. When he knew her a little better – when he found out who was responsible. He
did not believe it was her brother. The shallow, puffed-up ego which had looked at him out of Harvey S. Zahmani’s eyes would not have been capable of the single-minded study necessary to select those individual gifts to make up such a synergistic power of evil. Well. It would wait. He would not destroy her pleasure tonight.

  Neither would he destroy his own planned pleasure for the weekend. He returned to his purpose.

  ‘Do you ride, Marianne?’

  ‘It was my passion once, if twelve-year-old girls may be allowed to have passions. I had a wonderful horse, Rustam. I loved him above all things. When he was sold, after Papa died, I cried for days. I never could tell if it was for Papa, or for Rustam. I think it was for Rustam, though. I had already cried for Papa.’

  ‘That was at your home?’

  ‘Yes.’ She picked at the edges of her salad, a spiraling rosette of unfamiliar vegetables, intricately arranged. ‘I was just learning to jump. Rustam already knew how, of course, and he took great care to keep me on his back. I was always afraid I was in his way, hindering him.’

  ‘Is it something you want to do again someday?’

  ‘Something I dream about. I would love to ride again, if I haven’t forgotten how.’

  ‘There is some particular affinity, I am told, between adolescent girls and horses. Some girls, I should say.’

  ‘Some, yes. I was very conscious of being … well, what can one say? Not weaker, exactly, but less able to force myself upon the unimpressionable world. Less able, that is, than Papa, or Harvey. Mama didn’t seem to care. There were things the men did which I simply couldn’t understand. And yet, when I rode Rustam, the barriers were gone. I felt I could go anywhere, through anything, over anything. That I would be carried, as on wings.’

  The look she turned on him was full of such adoring memory that he clenched both fists in his lap, fighting down the urge to make some poetic outburst: ‘Oh, I would be your steed, lady. I would carry you to such places you have not dreamed of…’ Instead, he hid his face behind his napkin, managed to say something in a half-choked voice about Pegasus, leaving the poetry unsaid though the words sang in him like the after-sound of a plucked string, reverberating, summoning sympathetic vibrations from his loins.

  ‘I asked,’ he said in a voice deliberately dry, ‘because the house which we have leased while we are in the country has attached to it an excellent stable. The people who own it are vacationing in the Far East, and they left us in complete possession of their own riding horses – that is, once they learned that we are not barbarians.’ He choked back a laugh, remembering the oblique correspondence which had finally established this fact to the satisfaction of the Van Horsts. ‘I do not want you to miss the opportunity to ride with us this weekend, Marianne. I do not want to miss the opportunity to ride with you. I have invited other people, good friends, people you would enjoy. You would not need to be in the company of your brother at all. I will beg you, importune you, please. Be my guest.’

  She could not refuse him. Whether it was the wine, or the thought of the horses, or the candlelight, or his own face, so full of an expression which she refused to read but could not deny, she murmured, ‘If you’re quite sure it won’t be awkward for you if Harvey behaves oddly toward me. Perhaps he won’t. I know I’m a little silly about him, sometimes.’

  ‘Do you think he will be unpleasant company for my other guests?’

  ‘He can be charming,’ she said offhandedly. ‘I think he is only really unpleasant to me.’

  ‘Do you know why?’

  She flushed, a quick flowing of red from brow to chin which suffused her face with tension. He saw it, snarled at himself for walking with such heavy feet where he did not know the way, did not give her time to reply.

  ‘Ah, here come the crabs. Now we shall see if this is indeed a delicacy or merely one of those regional eccentricities which litter the pathways of a true gourmet.’

  ‘Gourmand,’ she said, relieved that the subject had been changed. ‘I think a gourmet would not eat soft-shelled crab. They are supposed to be an addictive indulgence, like popcorn.’

  ‘I wasn’t warned,’ he said in mock horror.

  ‘Be warned. I will fight you for them.’

  Makr Avehl could not have said whether he liked the dish or not. He ate it. More of it than he would have eaten if alone. He drank little wine, afraid of it for the first time in his life, of what he might say unwarily, having already said the wrong thing several times over, afraid of what he might do that would frighten his quarry.

  ‘Quarry?’ boomed the Magus, deep inside. ‘I warn you again, Makr Avehl. Kinswoman.’ He heard it as an echo of her own voice, ‘Be warned.’

  Marianne had not expected the wine, was not guarded against it, did not notice as it flowed around the controls she had set upon herself, washed away the little dikes and walls of the resolutions she had made, let her forget it was to have been an evening of politeness only, without future, without overtones. She felt herself beginning to glitter, did nothing at all to stop it, simply let it go on as though she were twelve once more, at the dinner table with Cloud-haired mama and Papa and their guests, full of happy questions and reasonably polite behavior, ready to be charmed and charming. ‘Tell me about Alphenlicht,’ she demanded. ‘All about it. Not the politics, but how it smells and tastes. What it is like to live there.’

  ‘Shall I be scholarly and give you the history? Or do you want a travelogue?’ Gods but she is beautiful. In this light, her skin is like pearl.

  ‘Don’t tell me how it got that way. Just tell me how it is.’ She licked her lips un-self-consciously, and he felt them on his own. He turned to look out the window and summon his wits.

  ‘Well, then. Alphenlicht is a small country. You know that. It is a mountainous one. There is no capital, as such. Instead, there are many small towns and villages gathered around the fortresses built by our ancestors, many of them on the sites of older fortresses built by the Urartians centuries before. Hilltop fortresses, mostly, with high stone walls topped by ragged battlements. They march along the flanks and edges of the mountains as though they had been built by nature rather than by man, gray and lichened, looking as old as forever.

  ‘Outside the walls, the towns straggle down the hillsides, narrow streets winding among clumps of walled buildings, half stable, part barn, part dwelling. We came from Median stock, remember. The Medes could never do without horses, and their houses were always surrounded by stable yards.’

  ‘Flies,’ commented Marianne. ‘There would be lots of flies.’

  ‘No,’ he objected. ‘We are not primitive. The litter from our stables enriches our farmland. Then, too, there is a constant smoky wind in Alphenlicht. We say it is possible to stand on the southern border of our country and know what is being cooked for supper on the northern edge. You asked what the country smells like, and that is it. Woodsmoke, as I have smelled here in autumn when the leaves are being burned; a smell as nostalgic among men as any I know of. A primitive smell, evoking the campfires of our most ancient ancestors.’ He thought about this, knowing it for a new-old truth.

  ‘Our houses are of stone, for the most part. We are self-consciously protective about our traditions, so we have a fondness still for glazed tile and many wooden pillars supporting ornate, carved capitals, often in the shapes of horses or bulls or mythical beasts. There is plaster over the stone, making the rooms white. The walls are thick, both for winter warmth and for summer cool, so windows are set deep and covered with wood screens which break the light, throwing a lace of shadow into our rooms. Floors are of stone for summer cool, but in winter we cover them with rugs, mostly from Turkey or Iran. Our people have never been great rug makers.

  ‘Ceilings are often vaulted, with wind scoops at the ends, to bring in the summer winds. In winter we cover them with stout shutters which seldom fit as well as they should. We say of an oddly assorted couple that they fit like scoop shutters, meaning that they do not…’ He fell silent, musing, seeing his
homeland through her eyes and his own words, as though newly.

  ‘What do you eat?’ she asked, taking the last bite of her final crab. ‘I am not hungry any longer, but I love to hear about food.’

  ‘Lamb and mutton. Chicken. Wild game. I have a particular fondness for wild fowl. Then, let me see, there are all the usual vegetables and grains. There are sheltered orchards along the foot of the snows where we grow apricots and peaches. We have berries and apples. There are lemon and orange trees in the conservatory at the Residence, but most citrus fruits are imported. We are able to import what we need, buying with the gems from our mines.’

  ‘But no soft-shelled crab,’ she mourned. ‘No fish.’

  ‘Indeed, fish. Trout from our streams and pools. For heaven’s sake, Marianne. How can you talk about food?’

  ‘What did you order for dessert?’ she asked, finishing her wine.

  He nodded to the waiter once more. ‘Crêpes, into which will be put slivers of miraculously creamy cheese from the Alphenlicht mountains, served with a sauce of fresh raspberries flamed in Himbeergeist and doused with raspberry syrup.’

  ‘That sounds lovely.’ She sighed in anticipation.

  ‘It is lovely.’ He made a wry mouth, mimed exasperation. ‘Also unavailable here. We’ve having an orange soufflé which is available here, which has been recommended by several people with ordinary, people-type appetites. Try a little of this sweet wine. It has a smell of mangoes, or so they say. I like the aroma, but I confess that the similarity escapes me.’

  They finished the meal with inconsequential talk, together with more wine, with brandy. They had been at the table for almost four hours when they left, coming out into a chilly, clear evening with a gibbous moon rising above the bay to send long, broken ladders of light across the water.

  ‘I am at the middle of the whole world,’ Marianne hummed. ‘See how all the lights come to me.’

  They stood at the center of the radiating lights, town lights on the point stretching to the north and east, island lights from small, clustered prominences to the east and south, the light of the moon.