by James Dorr
We constantly watched her, the servants, too, this time. Gombar, who still feared threats from the New City, from those who had made themselves his enemies, had had the chamber designed with screens at its sides, with small holes in them disguised as latticework through which his protectors could watch and wait even when those within slept. Even when, if all should prove successful, he and the Beautiful Corpse should make love, lest one who wished him harm should attempt to strike him at those times which would, for him, be his most unguarded.
And, as the months passed from autumn to winter, slowly her body stirred. Slowly her limbs began to move, fitfully, as if responding to some long-dead dream. Slowly her lips took on speech-like twitchings. Her eyelids soft flutterings.
Until we knew—I knew, from signs the scrolls that I had studied had warned me of—that she would soon wake.
We made ourselves ready. We made all things ready. She, clad now in a near-transparent shift of the sort she would have slept in in her old life. Gombar in his best robes, scarlet and purple and shot with gold thread, his silver mask on his face so she would not fear—not see his face all at once on her awakening.
I in the black chador of a scholar, a form of dress little changed from that of her own time, and with the hood pushed back so she would see mine. And, so we hoped, thus feel reassurance, that things had not so changed since she had last risen from her own royal bed. And thus not be so shocked that all the work we had done, that which we had restored to the fineness of its balance, of life and not-livingness, soul and spirit against the proud flesh it now re-inhabited, would not thus be riven. Its parts once more scattered.
And so we waited, the lantern light muted. With Gombar’s servants posted outside the room with trays of fish we had carefully cleaned of the river’s poisons, with real-flour wheatcakes obtained from New City, with berries and sweet fruits, with syrups and honeys such as the Ancients were used to spread on them, lest, when she arise, she demand her breakfast. Again so she would feel that things had not so changed.
And so not destroy herself.
Yet she was tough, as we soon discovered. A monarch’s daughter, she was used to change—a whim of her father and entire palace staffs might disappear to be replaced by others. Buildings might be constructed, others demolished within a day. And, as I came to realize later, her z’étoile would know at least, if this resurrection was indeed a part of her destiny—part of her own desire—somewhat of where and why she was awakening.
And so she yawned. She stretched. Her eyes opened—and lit upon Gombar.
She took in his mask, its richness of silver, the lushness and expense of his clothes, their gold and pearl ornaments, even his shoes of the softest leather, and sat up and smiled. She acknowledged me also, again with a smile, though not such a broad one, and nodded her head.
“You are from my father?” she asked, looking at me.
“In a sense,” I said. I put it as delicately as I could. “Your real father is not here, but it is I, and my patron Gombar, who have seen to your arousing.”
“I see,” she said, though she did not see yet. “And has my real father been away long?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“Then you shall do for him, at least until I should join him again. And this one who stands beside you is Gombar?”
I nodded again. “Yes.”
Then Gombar stepped forward. In all our searches we had found no name for her, but only titles, and so now he asked it: “Wh-what is your name?” he said.
She looked at Gombar as if he were foolish. “I have no proper name,” she said. “Do you not know that I am yet unmarried, that therefore my father has had no reason to bestow on me a Giving-Away Name? And as for my girlish names, those are behind me … ”
Gombar turned to me, shaking his head. “Then is it to be as you call her, Curator? That she is to be named the Beautiful Corpse?”
She yawned and stretched once more, this time turning her gaze to her own self. She looked at her body through its sheer silk casing, her breasts, her hips, the trimness of waist between. She inspected the whiteness of her skin, the rich luster of her hair, lifting it in her hand, touching the firmness of flesh below it. She felt the contours of her face, then looked again at us.
“It is what I am,” she said.
And so it was, I realized then, that I had already named her wisely—I, the substitute for her father. Thus through the custom of her ancient people it was now a part of her, within her own z’étoile, that she be the Beautiful Corpse and have no other name, now or ever.
Whispering, I cautioned Gombar once more about the uncertainty of the soul’s balance, its joining to flesh and life, and that, perhaps, for the while he should simply accept what was given him—that that was a part of his z’étoile also—and not disturb her yet with more questions. For surely what I and fate had bestowed on him would be sufficient, and more than sufficient, for most in the Tombs.
And he did, for the while at least, agree with what I said, later also agreeing with me that they should remain here, he and the one he loved, and not venture out to the New City or elsewhere. That the Tombs was their home.
But for now there was, still, one more item. The Beautiful Corpse was again looking at him, observing the strength of body that showed through his own rich garments, but, taking in his mask with her gaze too, her face became puzzled.
Gombar nodded. Slowly, fearfully, he removed the mask—the silver mask of hideous contours, of scowls and grimacings. Slowly he revealed that what it showed was true, that in his own eye there was as well a glint of cruelty, in his own lips a taint of avarice, a twist of greed and a hint of grasping. Of lust for money.
And, slowly, the Beautiful Corpse once again smiled.
• • •
It was in winter that we had aroused the Beautiful Corpse, but even then, the climate so having warmed over the centuries, the more than centuries since she had last lived, when she went out—even on such nights that traces of snow still whitened the tomb-tops—she would wear no more than the gossamer sleep-garment she had awakened in. To be sure she had modified its style, cutting its front to a sharper vee to better allow the night-breeze to cool her, drawing its waist in and slitting its long skirts to let the wind play also over her soft thighs, until, some would say, she looked almost the twin of the heat-wraiths one sees in the sweltering of summer—or, some said, an angel—as she ventured outside, Gombar on her arm, traipsing the tomb-alleys. Dancing beneath the moon on nights that it was full, reveling in shadows when it shrank to newness.
And also she wore jewels, at first those that had been hers from my collection: bracelets and necklaces, ear-loops and brooches, tiaras of precious stones, anklets of beaten gold. And later, others too, some again borrowed from my collection, others traded for—or even made from, at least for their settings—the gold that remained of Gombar’s last two baskets. Yet others cajoled for, for she had winning ways. A smile. An eye-wink. She had but to beckon and those of our neighbors she asked did her bidding, fulfilled her wishes in all within reason, she was so much in her very demeanor an Emperor’s daughter.
And Gombar did love her, too, even more than his gold, not that, even with her depredations, it was in any danger of being exhausted. For he also was a king—a king of money.
He bragged of this lust for jewels that she had in her, as well as for fine perfumes and colored lacquers for her toe- and fingernails, ground-ruby paints to enhance the gloss of her lips, mother-of-pearl and genuine turtle-shell brushes and combs, and diamond-cut mirrors to reflect her beauty, all these things expensive too. “Is it not wonderful?” he would say of her. “So young she is, scarcely become a woman, and yet with such mature tastes. Such craving to fill them. Such a—dare I say?—natural voraciousness that it puts even my own to shame?”
And also she shared his bed, those nights it was too hot to make love outside, cavorting on tomb-roofs, the two in each other’s arms. She, her body a-sheen with perspiring—even though
she was adapting quickly to weather far warmer than what she had known once—he dripping with honest sweat. Their perfumes mingling.
For she recognized in him, too, something kindred. A quality that, had he lived with her in her time, would have made of him a worthy husband, a thing that she saw—and I knew she had seen it from the smile on her lips—the very instant that he had unmasked himself.
And so, it seemed to me, that they were happy. They both had adapted well to the Tomb-life that winter and springtime, and even when summer’s heat roasted the grave-ground, making the earth hard. Making it for us the difficult season, those of us who dug the graves, bending our shovel blades, dulling our drill bits. Gombar by then had taken a post as a Haggler of Offerings, greeting the corpse trains that came to our Bridge Gate, explaining the need for giving the dead the highest honors. Even in summer when such things might cost more.
He wore his silver mask when he did this, that those of the wealthiest of the New City might still recognize who he once had been, and so, from that, realize he could not be talked down. He would, also, have his bodyguards with him, to lift the corpses to thus be so honored down from the tumbrel, and bring them inside, and later to dig the grave soil for them with their own hands.
And later, when he and the Beautiful Corpse made love in their bedchamber that adjoined mine, its outer, stone wall sweating coolness from the river’s water that flowed just beyond it, its inner walls covered with precious tapestries—yet not quite covered—his bodyguards would be there too at the peepholes, just outside the inner walls, sometimes I there as well when they requested it, seeing that nothing could come to disturb them.
• • •
But did she love him?
• • •
That still was a question that even I did not yet know the answer to. That is, did the Beautiful Corpse really love him, and not just find in him an acceptable consort. Here in the Tombs such things can make a difference as, so I knew, also they did to Gombar.
Again I warned him: “It is a fine balance between love and liking, just as with life and death. Sometimes even the greatest of sages do not know for certain.”
And yet those rare times the Beautiful Corpse went off on her own errands, her pearl-silver skin glowing in the moonlight, her sheerest of sheer silken garments fluttering, birdlike, around her, I knew that he brooded, so these times I added: “The wisest do not ask.”
Thus for a time he accepted my reasoning and, as far as I or any in the Tombs could tell, they, for the main part, both seemed happy.
But then the ghouls came again.
It was now fall, one that followed one of the hottest summers any of us had known, and the leaves on the few trees that grew in the Tombs had become red and burnished. It was past the time of the Goldsmelters’ Moon, well into the waxing of the Moon of Hungers, that the Beautiful Corpse strode alone to the tomb of her father as she did from time to time—even though some claimed that he was no longer there, but had instead been more highly exalted by one who, like Gombar, had been a lover—seeking to tarry there, as was her custom. Seeking to bathe there alone in the moonlight, casting her clothes off, to stand in her nakedness before her sisters’ tombs, exulting over them.
But before she had scarcely entered the plaza beneath the great marbled, step-sided bulk, shadows surrounded her. Fetid breath—the breath of corpse-eaters—violated her nostrils, those that had exhaled such finely-streamed bubbles that night in the glass trough.
She screamed just once before she fainted.
But once was sufficient. There were ears to hear her. Gombar’s bodyguards had trailed behind her, as they were ordered, since she was more precious to him than his own life. So much did he love her. And, shouting, with their bare hands they pulled the ghouls from her, shattering heads with the clubs of their fists, rending clawed limbs from rot-caked bodies, kicking in ribcages, never perhaps even then realizing how preternaturally strong their own limbs were.
By then, of course, others had come to help too, roused out by the hue and cry. Gombar and I were among the forefront, I laying into the ghouls myself with an iron-ringed staff, Gombar kneeling across his beloved’s form, ready to protect her if need be with his own body.
And still the ghouls came—even when we had pushed some of them back, we could see, in the distance, the flickering, blue corpse-lights of yet more ghouls coming—some of them shouting now: “She is ours, rich man! We know how you made her! We know how you bought her! We know where she comes from!”
Gombar arose then.
“No!” he shouted back, this time joining his bodyguards’ efforts, he too with his bare hands. He, too, a strong man, although, in his case, with a strength that was his own.
And yet they kept coming. And once more they shouted: “It is with blood that she was bathed, rich man. No more than bathed in it. She is a corpse-woman. A wraith. A vampire. Moving or not moving, walking or lying still, arm-crossed within her grave, she is our lawful prey!”
This time I answered them. “She is not!” I shouted. “She is a true-woman, whole-souled and living!”
And with that they paused. “You blaspheme,” one answered.
I shook my head. “I do not. You smelled the smell of her, the scent of living, despite the perfumes she wears. Despite your own breaths’ stink. You felt the sweat on her flesh when you touched her—when you would have defiled her. Corpses do not perspire.”
With that the foremost of the ghouls hesitated, then others as well. Then, rallying, some sought to renew their attack, to still make the best of it, but it was too late by then. By then we already had them routed.
• • •
But had we, I wondered? Had we in some metaphorical manner become ourselves vampires? Or through the use of Gombar’s blood made of her a creature no longer natural, as the ghouls accused? I do not think so, nor do I think it an important matter in what was to be of the Beautiful Corpse and Gombar. But sometimes, in the time since, I have wondered.
That morning Gombar lay naked beside her on the bed in their tapestried chamber, he having carried her home with his own hands. “Be careful,” I warned him. “She is still living, but she has endured much. Remember the balance.”
“I shall,” he whispered. “I shall only kiss her, and even that only when she has awakened. And only gently. And I shall do no more until she is ready.”
“Good,” I answered, and went to join his bodyguards outside, taking my station with them to wait and watch.
And so we watched all day, eschewing sleep ourselves, as was our duty, mine with the guards’ as well since I had taken it, while the Beautiful Corpse and Gombar gently slumbered, each in each other’s arms. Gombar, true to his word, not even brushing his lips on hers until, well into evening, she finally woke from her faint.
“Gombar,” she murmured then. “Gombar, you rescued me!”
“Yes,” he whispered. “I—and our friends did.”
She kissed him softly and, as he had promised, he kissed her back gently. Gently, and not until she was ready, he caressed her body, as she rubbed hers against his. Gently, he kissed her below her lips now, rubbing tongue against nipples, as she responded by rolling beneath him. As soft thighs parted.
And, slowly, he entered her: “I love you,” he whispered.
“Gombar!” I cautioned, speaking in whispers too, through the wall’s spyhole, but just loud enough for him to barely hear me. “Remember. The balance. The instability. The thinness of life and death’s separation—the need to avoid shock. Especially now, do not ask too much of her!”
But, if he heard me, he did not listen. He kissed her again as he entered her fully, then whispered once more, ignoring my warning, the question he never had dared ask until now:
“Do you love me also?”
“I–” The Beautiful Corpse tried to answer. I saw her lips moving. I strained my ears to hear more, but then, suddenly, her body stiffened. Her arms gripped around his back, shuddering, just as her strong legs encircle
d him, squeezing him to her. Her fingernails biting flesh. Until, a whisper, a moan, a rattle, and then—from him—a scream! As, underneath his, her body suddenly sank in on itself, instantly rotting, as if all its age and more had in that one moment been restored to it.
And, in one more moment, no more than a layer of dust lay beneath him.
We ran to him quickly, but he was as dead as she, Gombar and the Beautiful Corpse locked together for all time. In whatever place it was her soul had gone to, as, in its flying apart, in its separation from flesh, it had pulled his soul with it.
Thus embraced, forever.
And so: Did she love him?
• • •
The wisest do not ask. But for all that, one is not immune to guessing.
After we ascertained Gombar was dead too, we swept up the dust of the Beautiful Corpse and placed it in a jeweled chest. We reopened the obelisk she had come from and scattered it in there, scattering also the ornaments she had worn, those that I knew had been her favorites, the earrings and anklets, the waist-clasps and armbands, along with her combs and her paints and cosmetics, the things she would want should she come to life once more. And in it, also, we put Gombar’s body, face down as it had been in its last moments, making its love to hers, except that over his face we placed again the silver mask, so she might recognize him should he, too, in some future age, come to life again with her.
And so we resealed the tomb, all things together, under the shadow of her father’s Pyramid, whether his bones truly lay there or elsewhere. If elsewhere, we knew she would know where to find him, to beg his blessing for her and her consort, but also to tell him she already had a name.
One that befitted her.
As for Gombar’s “friends,” his alive-again bodyguards, they remained in the Tombs, becoming gravediggers, putting their strength to use breaking the summer soil. And in the winter they also took turns at acting as gate-guards, daring the ghouls to come. But no ghouls did come when they were on duty, remembering too well, perhaps, their last meeting.