The Black Throne

by Fred Saberhagen

  "And so," I continued, "we have been reduced to trying to trade this crate of fine wine for food and a secure place to stay. It was originally intended for Prospero, but those who brought it here abandoned it and fled, for fear of the Red Death."

  "Of course," he muttered, opening the door wider, still staring at the case. "Won't you bring it inside?"

  At this, we all moved forward simultaneously. Eyes widening, he raised a hand. "No," he said. "The ape and the bird must remain outside."

  "They can't be left unattended," I said.

  "Then let the lady keep them company while you transport the crate," he suggested. "I cannot offer you assistance with it, as my servants are also fled.

  "But a certain matter of great moment compels me to remain," he added, almost under his breath.

  Fortunato suddenly lurched into view behind him, still wearing his jester's cap and bells. He took a swig from a small glass flask with a broken, jagged neck, then tried focussing his gaze in our direction.

  "What's keeping you?" he asked. "I want to go at that pipe of Montal— Montin—"

  "Amontillado!" Grip shrieked, and the man stumbled back, a look of terror suddenly upon his face.

  "The Devil!" he cried, continuing to back away.

  "No," I answered Montresor. "We don't bring it in unless all of us come with it."

  "An ass! Luchesi's an ass! You know that, Montresor?" Fortunato suddenly exclaimed. "An ignoramus! Couldn't tell sherry from vinegar—"

  The man in motley broke into a suspicious coughing fit.

  "Nothing," he said quickly then, his English more heavily accented than Montresor's. "It is not the plague. I will not die of a cough."

  "No," said Montresor, eyeing him thoughtfully. "I think we may safely say that you will not."

  Montresor turned away from him then and stood back from the door. He gestured.

  "Come in—all of you—then. This way. We must convey it below."

  We entered and he secured the door. Peters and I followed him. Ligeia, Emerson, and Grip followed us. Fortunato stumped and staggered along even farther to the rear, alternately cursing, singing, and muttering about Luchesi's stupidity. Just your typical Friday night in a plague-ridden city.

  Montresor led us down a curving stone stair to his vast cellar. Oddly, pitch-soaked torches and large candles blazed in numerous niches and holders. It seemed an unusual extravagance in such a sequestered portion of the house.

  At last Peters and I reached the bottom and deposited the box, at Montresor's direction, in a subterranean passage which seemed to lead off into a species of catacomb. I was particularly anxious to go farther, for it seemed likely that the tunnel we sought must have its beginning somewhere nearby.

  There were skulls and other human bones visible in the nitre-encrusted walls, and the shadows flitted like dark fingers across them. Cobwebs hung like fishing nets at every irregularity, and the rustling sounds of retreating vermin brought to mind the ordeal in Toledo which still troubled my slumbers.

  Montresor saw the direction of my gaze and smiled.

  "This place was once the burial ground for the abbey," he said, with a gesture to the grisly remains. "That was back in the days before Prince Prospero's father had driven out the monks and taken the property for himself."

  We transported the crate to a position near the wall which he had indicated, and there we set it down.

  "There is some connection to this abbey, then?" I asked.

  He did not reply, but—to my surprise—turned away. I had half-expected him to pry open the crate at once, to gloat over his acquisition. Instead, he took a few paces away from us, and I could see that his attention was on Fortunato. Fortunato had seated himself on a bony ledge, and I now noted that he was studying Ligeia's tall and slender figure, her curling raven hair, with an expression most simply described as lust.

  Montresor muttered something about drink which the son of an actress might well recognize, " 'Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance . . . makes him stand to, and not stand to . . . and, giving him the lie, leaves him.' "

  I did not applaud, however, as he did an about-face, as I was shifting my attention to Ligeia who was ignoring the drunken jester entirely.

  Our host drew nearer, touched my arm lightly and steered me a few paces off to the side.

  "Are you, my good fellow, still seeking entrance to the abbey?" he asked.

  I bowed. That the gesture had in it more of mockery than of humility seemed only in character, no doubt.

  "It is our profoundest wish, sir," I replied.

  "Then let me show you. There is indeed a tunnel," he said. "It is sealed at the abbey end, walled up there in my father's time, or perhaps my grandfather's. The current prince himself does not know of this passage."

  "Sealed!" I said. "Then how are we to get through?"

  "It is simple enough," he explained. "I will give you tools—hammers, a prying bar. Stout fellows such as yourselves will have no difficulty getting through that thin wall at the far end of the passage. You will then find yourselves in the remotest corner of one of the abbey's storerooms. But—and this is important—you will seal up that wall again, as soon as you have broken out. And then you must hide your tools, put them down one of the many wells within the abbey's cellars. Otherwise the prince may discover the tunnel—know that someone has just come in, bringing possible contagion—and hunt you down, and—"

  Montresor broke off here, and with a swift movement of his foot flattened and smeared a scurrying beetle on the stone floor. For a moment, we considered the result in thoughtful silence.

  "The prince," he concluded, "fears one thing only. And that is the Red Death."

  * * *

  And so we agreed to Montresor's plan. The only problem was Valdemar. He would have to be left behind. I could hardly speak openly of this difficulty with my companions while Montresor was within earshot. But Ligeia perceived the difficulty at once. With a dramatic flourish of her cloak she turned to me suddenly.

  "Edgar, I have given this more thought," she announced, a quaver to her words, a quiver to her lip. "I cannot accompany you. I fear to enter the stronghold of a prince whose cruelty is legendary. You must go on without me."

  Was there once, or was there still, I suddenly wondered, some special tie between these two—Ligeia and Valdemar—which did not depend upon mesmerism? Odd thought. I was uncertain where it had come from or why it seemed possibly appropriate.

  Montresor stared at her as if he were about to argue. But we were a formidable group, obviously strong and somewhat reckless. He elected to remain silent.

  A snore reached us from Fortunato's direction. He had passed out, slumped on his stone ledge.

  Peters eyed him, then advanced and took his cap and bells and tried them on. The sleeper stirred but did not wake as Peters stripped him of his motley jacket, too. Montresor watched but said nothing.

  Peters and I took up the torch and tools. Then—Emerson following—we entered the dark tunnel. I had been surprised, in the alcove where we had obtained the tools, to catch a glimpse of a tub holding a quantity of freshly mixed mortar.

  The passage was low, crooked, overgrown with spiderwebs. Plainly, it had not been used in many years.

  We had not gone far before a bend in the passage took us out of sight of the two watching figures, Ligeia and Montresor, and the slumped form of Fortunato in his white linen. A hundred paces and I knew Ligeia was on the stair, Grip upon her shoulder, on her way to a distant bedroom, leaving the others to their own devices. I could almost hear Grip repeating his wine-drinkers' joke.

  * * *

  He paced the decks of an ancient vessel, knees shaky, joints aching. Occasionally, he groped among his navigational instruments of tarnished brass and greening bronze. Mumbling to himself, he would go topside to take readings, polar mists drifting above the waters, ice floes sliding by. His ancient crew lurched about him and strange birds called from
overhead. At times it seemed that someone attempted to address him in words mumbled and low, catching at his sleeve, pursuing him on his rounds. But always, when he turned, the figure would flit away, fade. The words never came quite clear. He would return to his cabin then, to rummage and reflect. . . .

  Poe awoke in a cold sweat, hands trembling. There had been so many dreams, some of them utterly terrible—such as that of the pit and the pendulum—and while this lacked the horror of that one or the grotesqueries of the encounter with King Pest and his court, it bore an intolerable element of loss and abandonment. He massaged his damp temples.

  . . . As if he had sailed beyond human ken, he reflected, past all normal commerce of thought and feeling. And yet must he go on, against the winds and the tides of change and becoming. Lost, lost.

  VIII

  We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss—we grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger. Unaccountably we remain. By slow degrees our sickness and dizziness and horror become merged in a cloud of unnamable feeling. By gradations, still more imperceptible, this cloud assumes shape, as did the vapor from the bottle out of which arose the genius in the Arabian Nights. But out of this our cloud upon the precipice's edge, there grows into palpability, a shape, far more terrible than any genius or any demon of a tale, and yet it is but a thought, although a fearful one, and one which chills the very marrow of our bones with the fierceness of the delight of its horror. It is merely the idea of what would be our sensations during the sweeping precipitancy of a fall from such a height. And this fall—this rushing annihilation—for the very reason that it involves that one most ghastly and loathsome of all the most ghastly and loathsome images of death and suffering which have ever presented themselves to our imagination—for this very cause do we now the most vividly desire it. And because our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore do we the most impetuously approach it.

  The Imp of the Perverse,

  Edgar Allan Poe

  * * *

  And so we followed the long, secret tunnel through the catacombs, to its end against a blank stone wall. We listened carefully, we listened long at this place, but we could hear nothing. We looked for light at the interstices between stones where the mortar had crumbled away, but we could see none.

  So we attacked the wall with hammers and bar. The antique dust powdered our clothes, skin, and hair, got in our eyes and mouths; but soon we had made an opening large enough to admit a person into the lowest level of Prospero's stronghold.

  On the other side, Peters, Emerson, and I emerged into a storeroom crowded with huge crates and bales whose contents we wasted no time trying to guess. Quickly, by the flickering torchlight, we piled back stones we had removed, closing the wall at our point of entry, leaving the tools just outside in the tunnel. Of course we had no mortar, but in this dim corner the chance of any inspection seemed remote. To make that chance still smaller we managed to shift a large crate to a place where it shadowed any sign of our labors.

  "What now, Eddie?" Peters asked.

  "I say we go topside and try to blend in." I considered his borrowed motley. "We're entertainers. You're dressed for the part. I'm not."

  "You juggle? Know any acrobat tricks?"

  I shook my head.

  "Afraid not."

  "Then I guess you're an animal trainer. Emerson, c'mere." The ape leapt down from a crate and came to him. "You be takin' yer orders from Eddie, we go upstairs. Unnerstan'?"

  Emerson shambled over and stared at me. I extended my right hand.

  "Shake," I said.

  The simian reached forward, seized my hand and pumped it.

  "I'd guess," I said, "there'll be a pretty big crowd to run things—servants, cooks, whores, soldiers, entertainers. If they've only been in here a few days they can't all know each other yet. A couple of new faces among the entertainers shouldn't be likely to startle anyone. I'll take Emerson up and see how we blend. Why don't you wait an hour or so, then come up and try the same thing."

  "I'd judge it ter be fairly late. May not be that many about."

  "On the other hand, Prospero's a reveler. He may keep going till he drops every night. We'll just have to see. Keep an eye out for a place to sleep, too."

  "Right," he said.

  And so we located the stair and I mounted it, Emerson at my side. We came to several choices of ways. I opted for ground level and centrality. This brought me in due course to a courtyard resembling nothing so much as an enormous gypsy encampment. It was lit by torches and campfires, roped off into sections filled with tents and lean-tos, through which the babble of tongues and the sounds of fiddles and guitars carried; people were dancing, drinking, eating, children were crying, dogs wandered, and two men were fighting at the far end. There were buildings on every side of the courtyard, interconnecting, though the most massive seemed the one to the north. It was the most completely lit, and as my wanderings bore me in that direction I became aware that a goodly amount of the noise I heard was actually coming from within it.

  No one challenged me, and even Emerson was not unique as a performing animal. There were two trained bears and a troupe of clever dogs.

  Several circuits of the courtyard and whatever curiosity we might have roused soon gave way to indifference. I learned that some of the servants, entertainers, and miscellaneous staff had taken up residence in the complex at the south end of the yard. But on inspection these quarters proved small, damp, windowless and poorly ventilated, in the main, and I could see why so many were camping outside. I later learned that these had originally been the monks' cells. While I could appreciate their spiritual fortitude I required something closer to the mainstream of life here.

  A bit later I encountered Peters in his motley, proceeding as I had. He agreed with my feelings on lodgings. We spent that night in the stables, and no one seemed to mind or even notice. Further exploration of these quarters showed us an out-of-the-way corner behind the stables where Emerson could be chained in such a fashion that he could easily free himself in an emergency. Peters and I settled upon a small loft, a seeming repository for unused harness, as our own lodging. I had grown accustomed to stables during my time with the cavalry, and my continuing presence in this one seemed oddly bracing.

  Peters and I dined on bread and soup at the entertainers' communal table. Emerson took to foraging in the small hours and seemed able to satisfy his needs in this fashion—I suspect with fruit and vegetable leftovers from Prospero's feasts.

  And the days wore on. We spent the better part of a week exploring and creating a map of the place. As for the nobles and their consorts, the wealthy merchants and theirs, we saw a few in the distance but we did not see Von Kempelen. Nor did we see Annie. And while I felt as if I knew Griswold from my nightmare vision in the pit, I might have passed Templeton and Goodfellow without recognizing them. And January passed into February. I had been afraid to take any chances until we'd gained familiarity with our surroundings. Now we were near that point, and I was wondering as to our best course of action.

  Events, however, preceded any action on my part. A few days later, Peters and I were returning to the stables from our breakfast, intending to practice an act we were working out—involving some miming on his part, some acrobatics by Emerson, and a bit of buffoonery by myself. We were hoping this would gain us access to an area of the abbey hitherto closed to us. As we approached, we heard a series of piteous shrieks and we hastened to learn its cause.

  Its source seemed to lie at the center of a fairly large crowd in the area immediately before the stables. The shrieking continued as we pressed forward, but I could not see what was going on.

  "Hoist me onto your shoulders, Eddie," Peters said.

  I complied. I squatted, he leapt up, I grasped his ankles, I stood. He was heavy, but he was nimble. He was only at a height for a few seconds before he jumped down. He uttered an oath as he did so.

  "What is it?" I asked.


  "They're floggin' a lad," he said. "Just a boy. Back's all laid open. Usin' a cat."

  He elbowed the man to his right.

  "Hey, mate," he asked. "What'd he do?"

  The man said something in Spanish.

  "Stole some grain meant for the prince's horses," Peters translated. "Prospero ordered the floggin'. He and some of his men are up front, watchin'."

  The shrieks stopped. We waited for the crowd to thin, as I wanted a look at Prospero. People began to drift off, and Peters inquired of another which one was the prince.

  Prospero was pointed out to us—a tall, handsome man, standing among his ministers and courtiers, chuckling with them as the boy was untied. He said something then to the man who had administered the beating—what, I'll never know, as my gaze drifted past him.

  She was standing in a doorway to the building off to my left, hand raised to her mouth, eyes wide with horror and quickly narrowing to dam tears. Annie. She turned away without having seen me and retreated within. In an instant I was after her.

  This building—to the west—connected the monastic quarters to the castellated citadel where Prospero and his entourage had their residence and revels. There was a main corridor on every level, sided by rooms larger than the cells though lacking the magnificence of those to the north or even the spaciousness of those to the east.

  I sought with my gaze in both directions when I reached the corridor. I caught sight of her fleeing form turning—northward, to my right—where I knew a stair to be located.

  "Annie!" I called, but she was already out of sight.

  I rushed after, and when I reached the stair I mounted it two steps at a time.

  North again, this time to my left, not so far ahead now, still hurrying.

  "Annie!"

  She slowed, looked back, halted, studied me in the light from the clerestories as I approached. Her brow unknitted itself and then she was smiling.