Once the kitchens are quiet, and everyone has left for the night, de Rais will take the package out of the oven. And then, he will begin to cook. He’ll prepare a special dish for the next banquet of the Lords of Night, which will take place tomorrow, on a day that was once called Midsummer. De Rais thinks of the eternal, plunging rain, which he fancies he can hear beating on the pavements above the dungeons of the kitchen, and he shivers as he swabs the bloodstained floor. Mechanically, he goes over the plan once more in his mind, but in the next few minutes, he realizes it might be too late to even think about executing it. The Unpriests have arrived.
They slither down the kitchen stairs, boot-heels clicking on the expensive tiles. De Rais risks a glance, and the nape of his neck grows cold. The people in this group are no ordinary Unpriests. Their long coats bear the Lords’ own insignia, and there is a woman with them, dressed in black velvet riding breeches and a leather cuirass. A single dark pearl dangles from one ear, like a bead of jet. Her eyes are hidden behind thick dark lenses. Her head swivels from side to side. This is the closest that de Rais has ever been to one of the creatures of the Lords of Night, and she makes him feel hollow and numb. He stares grimly down at the high, polished heels of her boots. The language that she speaks is archaic, formal, and barely intelligible; she enunciates slowly, evidently for the benefit of the head chef who, as a mere servant, might not be expected to understand her.
“The Unchurch has had word that an attempt is to be made on the lives of the Lords of Night, by non-persons, by dream-sellers, by ghosts. The servants must submit to be searched.”
“An attempt on— ?” The head chef’s thin face quivers in shock. “By whom?”
“I told you. Non-persons. Those who deny darkness, who seek That which is Not.”
“By what means?”
“Unknown,” the Unpriest says, stiffly, then concedes “By myself, at least. The Lords, of course, know all, but in their black wisdom they have not divulged the answer to one as lowly as myself and were I to know that answer, I would be no more likely to divulge it to you. Now. Prepare to be searched.”
From beneath the folds of her coat, she takes a device that de Rais has never seen before. It consists of an extending tube, at the end of which is a round, glistening lens. The woman raises it to the level of the head chef’s face, and passes it down his body, from the crown of his head to his toes. Fascinated, de Rais nonetheless stares straight ahead, afraid of attracting undue attention, but he glimpses from the corner of his eye the chef’s cadaverous form, surrounded for a moment by black energy; an aura of unlight. One by one, the woman passes the device along the rows of apprentices: darkness crackles and snaps. At last she reaches de Rais. She stares at him for a moment, and, swallowing, he raises his gaze to hers but sees nothing. Her eyes are entirely concealed behind the thick obsidian lenses.
She says, caressingly, “You look alarmed, boy. Are you afraid?”
De Rais says what is no more than the truth. “Yes. I am afraid. I have been afraid ever since I can remember.”
A thin charcoal brow arches above the lenses. The woman says, “Indeed? Of what?”
Boldly, de Rais answers, “Of not matching the expectations of the Lords of Night. Of not meeting the standards that I myself set to serve them.”
“You talk like an artist,” the woman says, brows still raised.
“I am an artist, madam,” de Rais says, with the bravery of absolute fear. “I am an artist of culinary color and its absence, a master of texture and shade, of monochrome uniformity. I drain the delicacies that I prepare of the touch of light and fire and brightness that is bestowed upon them by the flames on which they are conjured into being, so that the palates of the Lords of Night may not be seared for one moment by the tiniest spark of light.”
To de Rais’ infinite surprise, the head chef turns his head and says, “It’s true, my lady. The food that this man prepares is a paradigm of unlight. His concoctions are as dark and smooth and rich as the galaxy’s core itself.” His glance catches that of de Rais: I don’t like you. But you’re still one of us.
The woman bows her head in mocking acknowledgement. “Well, then, I am honored. But you must still be scrutinized.”
She raises the device once more and the lens rotates along its appointed track. The woman puts her head on one side, studies him.
“You absorb light, you say? You purify the foods of darkness?”
“I do.”
Something long and thin whips from the tube which holds the lens and lashes de Rais across the face. The impact spins him around and he sprawls backwards, stunned. The Unpriest says, “It shows. There are cracks and flickers along the edges of your soul. It is dangerous work that you do, M’sieu—?”
“My name is de Rais,” he says, through bleeding teeth.
“M’sieu de Rais. I had not thought that the life of a pastry chef would be so fraught with hazard. Take care that you visit the Unpriests more regularly, to purge your soul of traces of light as effectively as you purify the foods that you prepare.” She turns away.
The rest of the kitchen is searched methodically, and de Rais’ heart skips and hops as an investigation is made of his work area, including the little stove. The Unpriest lingers as she examines the pastries and sorbets, and de Rais hides a bruised smile as he sees her stealthy fingers creep out and flick a piece of brittle icing to her mouth. But the metal binding of the package remains secure, hidden beneath the iron floor of the little oven and guarded with unspells. The woman heads for the stairs with an angry flounce and de Rais inclines his head until the beetle-click of her boot-heels betrays her absence. No-one says a word after that, except the head chef, who turns to de Rais and says brusquely, “You. Have you finished?”
“The floor is clean. I have my preparations to complete for tomorrow.”
“Go and do it, then.”
One by one, the apprentices leave the kitchen. De Rais hovers over his tasks, lingering on slicing and molding and freezing, until the head chef snaps a curt goodnight, along with instructions to lock up. De Rais listens as the chef’s heavy footsteps pound up the stairs and the door slams behind him, then he runs to the stove and takes out the package. It’s so hot that it burns even de Rais’ callused hands. Cursing beneath his breath, he drops the package on the table and flicks open the complex locks until the inside of the package is revealed. He stares for a moment. The girl who gave the package to de Rais has told him: you will see nothing. Do not expect to be witness to miracle. It is latent, nothing more. But you will be able to touch it. Cautiously, de Rais reaches inside the hot metal binding and feels something smooth and soft and warm. He lifts it from the binding, and to his surprise it comes away easily. He feels it glide across the table and has to put out a hand to stop it from falling onto the floor.
Then, working quickly in case it dissipates, de Rais takes his sharp knife and begins to chop, his hand moving faster and faster with a chef’s practiced speed until the contents of the package are in tiny pieces. And then de Rais begins his final great work; the last work that, if all goes well, he will ever perform in the palace of the Lords of Night. He begins to sculpt the substance into sugars and candies, into creams and shadows. At last he passes his hand over the surface of the chopping block and finds only a minute sliver, like a splinter of glass. De Rais is sorely tempted to pop it in his mouth, but he resists the temptation and drifts it onto the curling pinnacle of a sugar tower instead. And then he slips everything into the darkest, coldest recesses of the refrigerator, to wait there till morning. As he turns to leave, he fancies that when he next opens the door of the refrigerator, it will have begun to glow.
Early next morning, before the waking bells toll out across the city, de Rais rises from a troubled night, bundles himself into his clothes and hurries back to the Palais. The rain has stopped, but a thin wind rips down the Tuileries, snatching at de Rais’ untidy hair. He does not think he slept, and yet his head is filled with dreams that defy the dark
ening day; dreams of something that flickers golden down the rainy air. When de Rais reaches the Palais, the head chef greets him with a grunt and a tilt of the head; their yesterday truce still fragile as spider silk.
Quietly, unobtrusively, de Rais slides into his chef’s jacket. He takes a deep, shaky breath and opens the refrigerator. It is still and dim within, and undisturbed. De Rais relaxes a little, and his breath mists cold metal. He rests his hands on the top of the refrigerator for a moment, to steady them. Then, he goes about the remaining preparations for this evening’s banquet; the less critical, less dangerous things, a frenzy of slicing and molding for the hundred guests of the Lords of Night.
When evening comes, everything is ready. De Rais stands back and exchanges triumphant glances with the head chef, whose face is blue with cold. De Rais dispatches perfumed bowls of dusk to the dining hall, and joins the apprentices for a surreptitious glimpse of the guests as they arrive. His hands are trembling again. He watches as something glides through the great double doors at the end of the vast hall. It stands seven feet high and its armored head drifts from side to side. Its mandibles exude a faint and musty fragrance. Huge smooth claws rustle beneath its midnight robes. It moves with ponderous, swinging slowness down the hall, and in its wake the air seems suddenly thin and darker, as though it breathes in health and light, and gives out nothing. Another follows through the double doors: female, this time. De Rais catches sight of the long out-thrust jaw and the slotted vertebrae of her throat beneath her hood. She places a delicately jointed foot on the thick carpet and teeters forward. De Rais melts back into the shadows. Three hours to go, before the clock strikes midnight.
Downstairs again, and silent in his corner of the kitchen, de Rais watches as the dishes of the main course are carried upstairs. The head chef has excelled himself. The foods he has prepared are rarefied to their finest extreme: all blood and essence. De Rais does not like to think where such food has come from, but he doubts that it has been produced by the meatracks at the edges of the city. Wild things, he thinks, reared in the deep growth of the forests which surround Paris, hunted down. The clock ticks on. The seemingly endless parade of dishes is borne from view. At last it is time for dessert.
De Rais hovers anxiously as the sorbets, each one with its cool, deceptive pool of night around the incarnadined ice, are taken upstairs by the serving staff. Then, still in his dark jacket, he waits for a frozen moment until he is certain that the attention of the head chef is elsewhere, and slips after the serving staff. Apart from a pair of servitors at the far end of the hallway, their glacial gaze fixed on the great bronze doors, the hallway is empty. De Rais hastens to the dining hall, his footsteps muffled by the carpet. He puts his eye to the crack of the dining room door. He knows the risk, he thinks, but he still has to see.
Inside, it is almost dark. A faint phosphorescence illuminates the high, echoing vaults of the hall. Beneath, the shadowy presences of the Lords of Night dine on the last of the meat essences. There is a susurrus of anticipation as the desserts are passed around the hall by the silent serving staff, who then troop from the hall. De Rais, his hearing fine-tuned by anticipation, hears the tiny crack as the first silver spoon touches the first sorbet, and the minute crunch of mandibles upon ice. De Rais takes a single breath. Followed by the rest of its companions, the Lord swallows a single spoonful of captured evening. And explodes.
Latent light, ingested by perfect darkness, electrifies every filament of the Lord’s body before it flares up into a great column of brilliance. De Rais, thrown back against the wall, can see nothing but the shattered form of the Lord branded upon his retinas, but he can taste the light which streams out from the dining hall: the hard, clear sunlight of mountain peaks; the roseate depths of sundown over ocean; the golden, glittering brightness of the sun at midsummer noon. It has worked. The Lords are gone in a moment of fire, consumed in the forbidden, latent light so carefully concealed in darkness and ice by the skilful hands of Severin de Rais. And in the eye of his mind de Rais sees that light pouring up from the heart of the banqueting hall, gilding every wall in Paris and running liquid into the river, distributing itself in immaculate proportion until the shell of shadow that covers the world is broken and the hidden sun revealed. Darkness and light, night and day, in balance once again, for everyone.
Except de Rais. For he knows, as soon as that first blaze of magnificence has passed, that the light has been too much for his shadow-born eyes. Once the flashing echoes have faded from the ruin of his sight, there is only night once more: familiar, relentless, and cold. But as de Rais turns to grope his way along the hallway, he is smiling, for in his imagination and his heart and his soul there is nothing but the sun.
First published in Asimov’s, June 2002.
About the Author
British writer Liz Williams has had work appear in Interzone, Asimov’s, Visionary Tongue, Subterranean, Terra Incognita, The New Jules Verne Adventures, Strange Horizons, Realms of Fantasy, and elsewhere, and her stories have been collected in Banquet of the Lords of Night and Other Stories, and, most recently, A Glass of Shadow. She’s probably best-known for her Detective Inspector Chen series, detailing the exploits of a policeman in a demon-haunted world who literally has to go to Hell to solve some of his cases, and which include Snake Agent, The Demon and the City, Precious Dragon, The Shadow Pavilion, and The Iron Khan. Her other books include the novels The Ghost Sister, Empire of Bones, The Poison Master, Nine Layers of Sky, Darkland, Bloodmind, Banner of Souls, and Winterstrike. Her most recent book is the start of the Worldsoul trilogy, Worldsoul. She lives in Brighton, England.
From Babel’s Fall’n Glory We Fled . . .
Michael Swanwick
Imagine a cross between Byzantium and a termite mound. Imagine a jeweled mountain, slender as an icicle, rising out of the steam jungles and disappearing into the dazzling pearl-grey skies of Gehenna. Imagine that Gaudi—he of the Segrada Familia and other biomorphic architectural whimsies—had been commissioned by a nightmare race of giant black millipedes to recreate Barcelona at the height of its glory, along with touches of the Forbidden City in the eighteenth century and Tokyo in the twenty-second, all within a single miles-high structure. Hold every bit of that in your mind at once, multiply by a thousand, and you’ve got only the faintest ghost of a notion of the splendor that was Babel.
Now imagine being inside Babel when it fell.
Hello. I’m Rosamund. I’m dead. I was present in human form when it happened and as a simulation chaotically embedded within a liquid crystal data-matrix then and thereafter up to the present moment. I was killed instantly when the meteors hit. I saw it all.
Rosamund means “rose of the world.” It’s the third most popular female name on Europa, after Gaea and Virginia Dare. For all our elaborate sophistication, we wear our hearts on our sleeves, we Europans.
Here’s what it was like:
“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”
“Wha—?” Carlos Quivera sat up, shedding rubble. He coughed, choked, shook his head. He couldn’t seem to think clearly. An instant ago he’d been standing in the chilled and pressurized embassy suite, conferring with Arsenio. Now . . . “How long have I been asleep?”
“Unconscious. Ten hours,” his suit (that’s me—Rosamund!) said. It had taken that long to heal his burns. Now it was shooting wake-up drugs into him: amphetamines, endorphins, attention enhancers, a witch’s brew of chemicals. Physically dangerous, but in this situation, whatever it might be, Quivera would survive by intelligence or not at all. “I was able to form myself around you before the walls ruptured. You were lucky.”
“The others? Did the others survive?”
“Their suits couldn’t reach them in time.”
“Did Rosamund . . . ?”
“All the others are dead.”
Quivera stood.
Even in the aftermath of disaster, Babel was an imposing structure. Ripped open and exposed to the outside air, a thousand rooms spilled over o
ne another toward the ground. Bridges and buttresses jutted into gaping smoke-filled canyons created by the slow collapse of hexagonal support beams (this was new data; I filed it under Architecture, subheading: Support Systems with links to Esthetics and Xenopsychology) in a jumbled geometry that would have terrified Piranesi himself. Everywhere, gleaming black millies scurried over the rubble.
Quivera stood.
In the canted space about him, bits and pieces of the embassy rooms were identifiable: a segment of wood molding, some velvet drapery now littered with chunks of marble, shreds of wallpaper (after a design by William Morris) now curling and browning in the heat. Human interior design was like nothing native to Gehenna and it had taken a great deal of labor and resources to make the embassy so pleasant for human habitation. The queen-mothers had been generous with everything but their trust.
Quivera stood.
There were several corpses remaining as well, still recognizably human though they were blistered and swollen by the savage heat. These had been his colleagues (all of them), his friends (most of them), his enemies (two, perhaps three), and even his lover (one). Now they were gone, and it was as if they had been compressed into one indistinguishable mass, and his feelings toward them all as well: shock and sorrow and anger and survivor guilt all slagged together to become one savage emotion.
Quivera threw back his head and howled.
I had a reference point now. Swiftly, I mixed serotonin-precursors and injected them through a hundred microtubules into the appropriate areas of his brain. Deftly, they took hold. Quivera stopped crying. I had my metaphorical hands on the control knobs of his emotions. I turned him cold, cold, cold.
“I feel nothing,” he said wonderingly. “Everyone is dead, and I feel nothing.” Then, flat as flat: “What kind of monster am I?”
Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 80 Page 4