It is the true nature of the secret.
And Duke Rossian of Violet is gripped in the intestines with the hand of immense terror at the knowledge; it is the tree of knowledge from that garden, for he has suddenly tasted the eye-opening fruit.
His fingertip buzzes in his mind—if such a thing were possible—as it sits halfway through the barrier like a blunt needle, plugging the outside away from the inside, or the other way around.
Inside, outside, inside, outside. This side and that—interchangeable?
If he moves his finger forward, things will begin to collapse—all things. If he moves it back, inside, toward himself—who is to say the same thing might not happen anyway? The breach exists, and the barrier has been compromised.
The Duke slowly begins to withdraw his finger back inward, as he simultaneously reaches out with all the resources of his mind to pull the broken edges back together, quickly, desperately—to sew it shut, paste it, weave it, heal it, seal it—all imaginary visions of mending come into play.
For an infinite, interminable moment, something is happening.
At last the tingling is gone, and he senses the hole is no longer. How strong the mended place is, he does not know. But at least he knows that a certain collapse has been averted. . . .
“My Lord?” Molly speaks over and over, he comes to realize. She has been calling him for several moments now, but only now is he capable of hearing, or perceiving with his normal senses.
“What are you doing, Lord Rossian?”
He steps backward, putting several feet of safety between him and the temptation of the gates. And then he turns to her.
“Nothing. Let us go to attend your sister,” he says in a dead voice.
And with these words the Duke turns back from the glory of the wind and sunlight and returns into his castle.
VI: Sacrifice
Nairis lies—or rather, her blackened remains lie—in a pile of soot on the white linen sheets of the bed. Bones and charred fragments are scattered in a shape that is vaguely human.
Standing over the bed, Rossian feels a wash of anger at the futility of it. He performs a miracle once (even now it makes his mind reel to think what he is capable of doing), and now he must recreate it. So different, now that the artist has his work destroyed by an outside force, so different a feeling, this anger; the presumption, the audacity of ultimate control has been taken from him, and it’s what infuriates.
What makes me different from the Deity? he thinks in bitter rage. I can call up life. And with a flick of the finger I can cast down all of creation. . . . What makes me different? Is it that someone else can come along and affect my living artwork?
His thoughts continue a disjointed dance as he notices a faint, barely noticeable series of creamy stains along the coverlet in places where something has been splattered recently; he knows it for what it is, and feels a wash of cold memory—
No, stop. He must stop thinking in that direction, for it does not matter now.
I do what I will. Create, despoil, recreate at will, again and again. It is my prerogative.
Molly stands next to him, and she touches him on the shirtsleeve, so that inside him the life force recoils from her death. “Please . . .” she says. And her subsequent words seem to echo his thoughts, as though she reads his mind. “You must try to bring her back again. You’re the greatest living master of the hidden arts. We both know that if there’s anyone in all the world, then it’s only you who can . . . do it. . . .”
“I’ll wait until night,” he muses to himself.
But she interrupts. “No,” she says. “Now, please. Night is when the arcane forces are at their strongest, true. And yet, daytime, precise noon, is when the living force is at its height. And since what you attempt is the manipulation of the life force itself, the greatest of acts of power, it will work better, I think, if you begin now.”
“Very well.”
And suddenly he is raising his hands, running them inches above the charred remains, stroking the air just above. Cool luster comes from his hands, and it mixes with the bright daylight pouring in from the large window of this chamber. Gold warmth and pallor, the light blends with itself, while Molly makes a little sound and steps back. Now it is her death recoiling from the living forces being manipulated here.
The Duke works quickly. This time he knows exactly what is to be done; there is no hesitation as he reaches into the golden daylight-suffused air around him and pulls in elements of energy waveform, as though dipping his hands into containers of salt, flour, sugar powder, tangible particles that are everywhere, and so nearby as to be everpresent for one who knows how to look.
In moments, a familiar body’s outline begins to take shape once again, at first translucent and delicate as though she is a mold poured from water. Shadow-forms that are internal organs can be seen, and the network of blood vessels branches out in fine root offshoots of an underwater plant, filled with motionless bluish-rose liquid, half corporeal. The lump that is her heart, just below the see-through ribcage, is still and unmoving—yet. As all things form, the translucence also fades, until she is fully opaque.
As she comes back into being, Nairis—or Janerizel—is a life-sized doll, a reposing statue of flesh which is not flesh yet; but wait, now it is.
Once more she is at that interim stage of being where she is already tangible, yet not much more than a hairless smooth thing of poured wax. Beautiful, the Duke again notes and marvels, and feels a distracting surge of warmth—no, stop.
“Now, the final step. . . . Yes!” whispers Molly. “Make her move with life! Make her truly move and be! My Lord, my sweet Duke, I entrust upon your care my sister, Nairis.”
And suddenly she clutches Rossian’s hand, and through his shirtsleeve he immediately connects to her on a strange level, feels her black flames, a killing destructive force which permeates her, flowing out of the deep maw in her skull. He sees it freely now, death encroaching, at the same time as he remembers the moment of their peculiar oath-bound intimacy, wrist-to-wrist, when yesterday her blood mixes with his.
“What are you doing?” he exclaims, startled out of the intricacies of the energy manipulation in which he engages over Nairis. Molly’s hand continues pressing against his arm, small fingers gripping tight, and involuntarily he feels a strange sympathetic response as something lashes out at her from within him. He feels a grand overpowering wave of strength that seems to ripple out of the fabric of the world; it enters him. It courses up from his genitals, then his solar plexus, and out through his arm and engages hers on an antagonistic occult level.
His life force has been called forth and now it grapples with her unnatural death-energy. Where their flesh touches, even through the shirtsleeves, there is a roiling of temperatures, fire and ice fluctuating at an alarming rate, hot to cold, shuddering, air itself heating and cooling in a rapidfire pulse.
“Molly!” he manages to gasp. “What are you doing? We must not do this—” Yet somehow he is now locked in a feeble state of inaction where he does not find the will in himself to let go of her although he knows he must disengage, while their opposite forces battle. Indeed, there is a buzz of pleasure at the threshold between him and her, a sensual coming together in a mutually canceling-out death wish and life urge.
And yet it seems that the battle is fought on unequal terms. Life force is a moving vector while death is a swallowing maw, and the aggressive overpowers the receptive. Within moments, he is a burning occult torch and he feels his virile life-flames leave his flesh and begin to travel up her arm in a reverse transmutation of energy.
Molly screams, while he knows what is happening to her flesh, how it begins a strange transformation of its own, and yet he is unable to let go, to shake her off, and she is holding on with a desperate grip.
“Promise . . .” she says, as his life force eats up her gaping vacuum, filling her with cleansing destruction. “Promise that you will care for her. Take me . . . take what’s left of me
and the force, and put me inside her. . . . Put me back inside my Nairis . . . Izelle, oh, my sister, my only love. . . .”
The fey light in her eyes begins to fade together with their entreaty, and suddenly Molly is translucent.
The Duke stares in horror as the strange creature who has insinuated herself into his life only a day ago with an impossible intimacy is fading into nothing, her outlines blurring and her form taking on a remote and infinite distance.
The peacock-bright jester costume collapses into a pile of rags on top of something small and unidentifiable, while in the sudden resulting absence of Molly and Molly’s hold, the Duke’s arm is released. He falls forward from the recoiling strength of his own resistance, falls hands first against the body of Nairis-Izelle.
Life force is an inferno now, as it consumes the place which is Molly and beyond; consumes the chamber and lashes out for the second time, entering the static body on the bed.
It’s as though the heavens have opened up for an instant and divine lightning courses through him. The Duke groans in unexpected sexual release, feeling it blast from the center in his genitals, for suddenly he is hard and erect without trying, and on the next exhalation of breath he comes, groaning in one continuous guttural sound, comes in his clothes, weak-kneed, staining himself, while the energy continues through him, through his hands, and out into the body. . . .
The body jerks with the charge, and she sits up, chest first, head still lolling, hairless and incomplete, as the heart begins a shuddering terrible pounding, running double-time. At the same instant, other organs engage as the intricate mechanism cranks into being—brain, lungs, liver, pancreas, kidneys, spleen, stomach, intestines, womb—and the liquid in her veins is stirred to movement and begins to advance, so that in less then five beats her skin attains color, while hair begins to appear from the follicles.
Another full-body spasm, and Nairis-Izelle opens her eyes wide, and on her first regular breath lets out a scream. It is the raw cracked-voice sound of a Mad Queen, and for the first time in decades, possibly at least a century, it fills the recesses of stone and resounds with familiarity in the Mad Queens Tower.
The newborn woman then sits up, clutching her naked body with her arms, her legs folded at the knees, panting rapidly, staring wildly about her. And yet, when she sees the Duke and says, “Oh, God . . . Oh, God!” over and over, there is clarity and reason in her cornflower-blue eyes, for she is fully herself and cognizant and alive.
“Molly . . .” the Duke says stupidly, half bent, fallen near her on the bed, propping himself with the elbows. There is a spreading stain at his crotch, but neither he nor Izelle-Nairis seem to notice or care, not in this moment post-miracle.
“Molly! Oh, my Molly, where—” and the woman bursts into shuddering sobs. Fat tears run down her face which is now red and imperfect and contorted with genuine pain.
The Duke watches her and cannot help but notice such detail; notices the rich auburn hair that once again falls in a tangle around her, and the pale soft skin, and the hollow elegance of her face, so unlike her sister’s. . . .
“Where is she?”
And then she looks down and sees the garish costume on the floor, mere steps away from the bed.
Her face is a mess of anguish. Nairis—or Izelle—makes fists to beat at herself. She grabs the coverlet and the bedding around her and covers herself, shuddering, and again she strikes her chest as she repeats, “In here . . . She is in here.”
VII: Parting Gift
In the early evening, the castle is an exuberantly burning candle, containing in itself a reflection of rose and persimmon and warm peach sunset. The stones of granite seem to acquire color, rich saturated hues of the earth and sky, entwined.
The Duchess of White is departing tonight, for she will not stay to sleep in these walls, not a moment longer than necessary. With her restoration to life, she has lost her powers.
As a result, she now has her freedom.
It is a curious blessing, this gain through loss, the Duke considers, for he is still in a shock, in a haze of spent effort and furious regret and. . . .
Molly.
“It started a very long time ago,” the Duchess of White tells him, as she stands before him in his study, primly dressed in borrowed clothing and radiating cold closed-in composure. He realizes she is still wary of him and of the world in general (and will be so for quite a long time), and she longs to be gone, and yet she does him the favor of an explanation.
“A long time ago I was a lonely little girl. I had no sister, you must understand. Molly—she is not real. I made her myself, made her from the budding powers in me that I was just discovering. I had a doll—a favorite toy, or maybe my only toy, after my parents died, leaving me to insane solitude. And so my Molly and I ‘played’ pretend games. Until one day I gave her enough of my life force that she came alive. She’s me, you know—was me. I fragmented myself in two, unknowingly, so that I would be with someone, and in the process, I think this was the beginning of the corruption of my powers. A living being is a complete self-sustaining entity of very specific balanced elements joined together in cosmic attraction—must always be so in order to retain true cohesion. Life energy is not to be measured in random portions, not to be doled out in casual bits and droplets like some homogenous stuff poured from a jar of milk. Instead it is a complex energy construct with a precise required proportion of elemental particles that together make a greater whole.”
“Yes,” he says. “I realize it now.”
“When Molly grew sufficiently autonomous (but never truly complete, of course; I was so ignorant of the nature of these things then), with time she became stronger, larger—full human size—and I think I continued to ‘feed’ her being with the small constant radiation from my own living self in the form of affection, need, love. Molly was a wonder—she was my companion and my confidante and my joy—the best of myself. We made up names and games and we lost ourselves in the interaction. We grew, both of us. I would forget she was unreal, and in time she forgot that she was not a child of my parents. Though—on some deep level I think she always knew.”
“She knew enough, when she came here, with you. . . .” the Duke says, watching her.
“Yes,” the Duchess says. “I think she wanted more than anything to be alive, to be her own being. And yet—it was the critical foolhardy time when I had the idea of breaking out of the prison of my castle. We stood at the gates, and she passed across somehow (probably the barrier recognized her occult incompleteness as a being and allowed her through). I enacted the ritual, and felt my power—my very self!—drain out of me and into her. I stepped across the barrier, free, I thought. And the next instant, she did as I asked, she poured it all back into me. . . . I only remember a fierce instant of pain, and then nothing. Until today, when you brought me back.”
“So you do not remember . . . being alive in the interim, yesterday?”
But the Duchess looks at him blankly, and he does not pursue the line of thought.
“I must thank you with all my heart,” Izelle says, and she puts her hand forth.
The Duke takes it in his own and feels absolutely nothing—neither a surge of power nor recoil nor emotion. He lifts it to his mouth and there is indifferent, lukewarm softness at his lips.
“What will you do now?” he asks in politeness.
A tiny living smile comes to her lips for the first time. Her lips, the Duke notices, they are wide and full and sensual. Completely different. And somehow it makes him remember a different rosebud mouth.
“What will I do? Why, anything and everything,” says the Duchess of White. “I will return to my castle long enough to make arrangements, then travel the world and live at last, truly live. So much time to make up, you know, so much fierce joy. And—what of you? I realize that with your considerable arcane ability you now have complete control over the barrier, my Lord. You may simply walk out of these gates and also go wherever you please. It’s such a glorious re
alm we live in, so much beauty to see and experience—”
“Yes,” he says. “True, so much beauty out there, indeed.” And then he adds, “But, I don’t think I will.”
She frowns, drawing her smooth brow into a crease. “What? Whyever not?”
And the Duke thinks in that moment how, knowing what he knows now, he can rip at the barrier and pull down the universal drapery, and make the whole of creation dissolve just like Molly. . . . And he thinks that the Duchess, without her powers, and now forever locked away from the tree of knowledge with its impossible terrible fruit, will not understand it even if he tries to explain.
And so he smiles a little, a sad nostalgic movement of his face. And he says, to mollify her, “Maybe, someday.”
Mollify her, he thinks, ponders the double meaning of the word. It is one thing I cannot do.
“One more matter—I’m in your debt, my Lord,” the Duchess says, as she prepares to leave the room. “If there is anything I can do for you—nothing could ever be sufficient or adequate recompense for the magnitude of your act of course, but, anything—please do let me know.”
“There is one thing . . .” he says softly, watching the auburn glorious flow of her hair as she turns from him. And then, half-turned, she pauses. There is a long instant of tangible silence between them, and just possibly, she understands.
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