The Golden

by Lucius Shepard

  They murmured their assent and set about doing as he had instructed while he tended to Giselle. She did not respond to his ministrations, and he became worried that the abuse she had suffered and the drugs they had given her might have a cumulatively mortal effect. He would wait a little while longer, he decided. If she did not improve, then he would do what he must.

  “Paulina!” He beckoned to the blond girl, led her toward the door and out into the corridor, leaving the door ajar so he could keep watch on the others. He stood Paulina against the wall and, keeping his distance, studied her again. There was some quality about her, a clean sensuality, and he thought that this was the thing that had initially inspired his lust. That, and her blood, with its heady, pungent bouquet. Not so compelling as the Golden’s blood. A less refined vintage, but a prized one nonetheless.

  “Have you never served one of the Family?” he asked.

  “No, my lord.”

  “Then how did you come here?”

  “I was born in the castle, lord.”

  “Here…in this low place?”

  “Yes, lord. As were my mother and father. And their parents before them. More than twenty generations of my family have lived in Castle Banat.”

  This fact engaged Beheim’s curiosity, but he had neither the time nor the inclination to question her about it further.

  “I would have you serve me, Paulina. Do you understand what this entails?”

  “I do, my lord.”

  “And would you enter my service?”

  She gave no reply. Tension showed in the set of her shoulders and her neck; some of the color had drained from her cheeks.

  “Are you afraid?”

  “I was, lord. Very afraid. But now…” She lowered her eyes. “Now I’m not so afraid as I was.”

  He reached out and lifted her chin, fixed her with a stare. The line of her mouth lost its firmness, and her eyes widened; he saw reflected in them an orange wash of torchlight centered by a darkness that he recognized to be himself.

  “Answer me, Paulina,” he said. “Answer me now. I cannot permit you a long deliberation.”

  “I would serve you,” she said in a faltering voice; she glanced at the doorway, at Giselle, who lay as if sleeping. “But my lord already has a servant.”

  “Surely two are permitted,” he said, amused. Yet in his heart he understood how pragmatic an act this cursory seduction was. Should Giselle fail to recover, should he submit her to judgment and she fail at that as well, he would need to replace her. Another betrayal. Not so bald a one as his infatuation with Alexandra, but a more profound one, perhaps, in that he was trivializing Giselle’s plight, preparing to do without her. More damning, too, in what it told about the depth of his feelings for her.

  With the tip of a forefinger he traced the blue vein in the hollow of Paulina’s neck. Her eyelids drooped, and she swayed ever so slightly, as if weakened by his touch.

  “Answer me, Paulina,” he said.

  Her answer, a whispered affirmation, seemed to come from a place deep within her, a place in which she was dazzled and dazed, liberated from all fear and inhibition.

  He stepped to the doorway. The others looked up from their grisly work, faces expectant. He did not speak, only urged them to caution with a stare. At length he pulled the door shut, closing them in, and went back to Paulina, who had not moved. He caressed her cheek, her hair, then slipped her robe from her shoulders. Her breasts were tipped with childish, rosy pink areola. They seemed improbably large, monstrously beautiful. White animals with soft, nodding lives of their own. He lifted one, testing its heft, and felt a surge of eagerness in his groin. Yet his thoughts did not focus entirely on Paulina; they drifted back to memories of Alexandra, her smaller, firmer breasts, her almost feral ardor. That annoyed him. He did not want to dwell on her except as a suspect, and to banish her from his thoughts, he bent to Paulina, inhaling the musk of her white skin and the sweetness of the river flowing through the thin blue channel in her neck. He nuzzled a spot, moistening it with the chemicals of rapture. His hands clamped her waist. When he drove his fangs into her, the flesh giving way as readily as might a piece of cork to a steel needle, she tensed and let out an aggrieved gasp; but then her head lolled to the side, allowing him better access. Her blood rushed forth as if it were eager to be drunk, and he was astounded by the complexity of its flavor. It was easily the most wonderful blood he had ever tasted. Rich with essence. Strange shapes came before his inner eye, shapes that assumed color and proportion, and to his vast surprise, he began to have an uncommon sense of Paulina’s history. He seemed to see her in a poorly lit room of soot-covered stone with several other blond children—her brothers and sisters, perhaps—and someone was watching, always someone in the darkness, watching and waiting for something. There were other images, a flood of them, all passing too quickly to register, moments of love and fear and pensive solitude, all weighted with that same oppressive feeling of being watched, and at the heart of these impressions was an intimation of her nature, her soul, stained by the violent, degrading culture of Banat’s outcasts, yet somehow maintaining a core of innocence and strength. Then this curious apprehension of her was swept away by his absorption with the taste of the blood, a dark syrupy sweetness with tart undertones and a body of wild, furious life that stimulated a hunger of unparalleled urgency.

  It took every ounce of his self-discipline to pull back from her, and when he did, still dizzy from the richness, she presented a gorgeous sight, with her eyes closed, her straw-colored hair tousled about her face, causing it to appear all the more delicate in contrast to this unruly frame; there was a seepage of blood from the incisions his fangs had made, filming over the upper slope of her right breast, and this excited him again. But he resisted the temptation to lick her clean and instead concentrated on the disturbing elements of what had happened. The hallucinatory effect of the blood; the image of the blond children. He recalled what Vlad had said: “I can give you blood that will—”

  That will what?

  Drive you mad? Intoxicate you as would the blood of the Golden?

  It occurred to Beheim that he had never inquired of Agenor where the breeding stock that produced the Golden lived. He had assumed that those involved in the breeding program inhabited the surrounding villages, but now it seemed apparent that the most logical of dwelling places was the castle itself. And Paulina. The product of twenty generations of life within the castle walls. Might she not be a vintage off from perfection by a degree, not quite subtle enough a flavor to serve as centerpiece for the Decanting? The Golden’s cousin, perhaps, or her sister? He believed this must be the case, for he had never drunk such blood before, never experienced such an overpowering response. Even if so, however, he doubted it would have any bearing on his investigation. It only furthered his comprehension of Castle Banat, of its intricate environment, and reminded him of how ill-equipped he was to deal with those intricacies.

  He pushed open the door and looked about the room, his eyes resting on the mutilated dead and the defiled living; on the bloody, bulging-eyed Vlad whimpering and twitching in some dream of finality; on the hideous murals depicting Beheim’s peers, and the chaotic painting of red streaks and puddles he had made on the stones; and lastly on the moribund Giselle, whom he had loved, whom perhaps he still loved, though now he was not confident of his capacities in that regard. Despite the air of perversion and brutality, he saw a tragic grandeur in the particulars of the scene, and he had the notion that no matter what the future held, no matter how long that future would last, he would always think of this room as the place where he had taken a final step away from his old life. He was different, he believed, from the man he had been prior to entering it. Larger and wiser. More dangerous. Different, too, in ways that beggared categorization, ways that he could not separate out from the welter of his new experiences and comprehensions. But some great dark thing in him, that entity newly wakened during his sojourn in the depths of Castle Banat, seemed to be ra
ising its head and taking a first long look around, gathering information that would fuel its preliminary conclusions. He did not know whether to be happy or dismayed by any of this. That, at least—his essential confusion—remained unaffected. However, he doubted that he would remain confused for long.

  Chapter TEN

  Felipe’s apartments were as Beheim had left them, and though he suspected this good fortune, though he wondered where Alexandra might be and to what end she might be occupying herself, he concluded that the deaths of Felipe and Dolores must thus far have gone undiscovered. The black portal that had swallowed them remained floating at the center of the living room, but it appeared to be decaying, its dark substance eroding, losing cohesion. If Felipe and Dolores still burned within, Beheim could not make out their particular fire from among the myriad lights that swarmed in its strange depths. He stood a moment before the portal, not in memorial for the dead, but rather in obeisance to its Mystery; he put his palm close to it, felt again that cold pressure, felt also the alternation of revulsion and allure it bred in him. It was not so frightening, this little patch of death, when one could choose to enter it or not. Indeed, the choice seemed much more problematic, a decision between an endless journey into madness and another journey whose most frightening landfall would be the porches of oblivion.

  As soon as he was certain that the apartment was empty, he released the outcasts, first allowing them to scavenge for valuables, then charging them to return to their habitations and say nothing of his business; but Paulina he kept with him, directing her to stand watch over Giselle, who lay unconscious at the foot of the stair leading to Felipe’s secret study. Once she was settled, he sat at Felipe’s desk and began poring over his journals, trying to gain some understanding of the dosages required to protect one against the light of day. Apparently Felipe had not ascertained the precise dosages necessary to protect for specific periods of time—though he had noted that he believed continued consumption would result in a permanent immunity—and Beheim was forced to make educated guesses. After he had copied the formula and gathered all other available knowledge, he opened the cabinet where Felipe stored the drug and set about diluting his supply with water, working feverishly, fearful of being discovered—according to what Felipe had written regarding Agenor’s insistence on a test, it seemed unlikely that Alexandra or anyone else would possess a supply of the drug; thus they would be forced to invade his sanctum in order to obtain it. If that occurred, Beheim planned a surprise for them. The image of Alexandra burning into charcoal beneath that grotesque sun did not delight him; but this was, he told himself, a game of her design—at the very least, of her choosing—and she had persuaded him to join in it. As troubling as was the idea of her death, the idea of his own troubled him still more.

  When he had finished, he tucked three flasks of the undiluted drug into an inner pocket, a sufficient supply, he estimated, for months of protection against the light—it might be that he would have a chance to run if things did not go well, and he did not want to be limited to night travel. He also took a dagger from the drawer of the desk. Then he hurried to the stairs, caught up Giselle in his arms, and—preceded by Paulina—made his way along dark and untraveled passages toward the heart of the castle. As he went he tried to unravel the skeins of rivalry and coercion that had led him to this pass. It was an inconceivable task. But he believed that whatever personal whims and political machinations were in play, they were all somehow subordinate to the debate currently engaging the Family. For the first time he wondered if, when standing with Agenor and Dolores in the great hall on the night of the murder, he had only been parroting his mentor. Now, cut off from Agenor’s influence, he was not quite so firm in his opinions. Who knew what bewildering eventualities the East might hold? Perhaps there were unknown dangers there more inimical to the Family than those known ones they faced in Europe. Perhaps they could undertake a change in Europe, become more devious and circumspect in their actions, and that alone would ensure survival. But then it might be that immersion in the East was the only tactic that would allow them the time necessary to adapt to such a change. In the end, he realized, the whole question would most likely be decided by the requisites of a design or game that none of them completely understood, with the possible exception of the amazing creature whom he was seeking to interview. It might be no more than the inevitable result of some operation of fate, like the one whose presence he had sensed just prior to meeting Vlad, on hearing the song of his blood, the weaving of an unimaginably large tapestry reaching its conclusion, a thready signature writing itself in the bottom corner. Alexandra had been right: he was a pawn. But so, for all her guile, was she. The most that they might hope to learn was whether they were of a color, moving together across the board toward the possibility of higher rank, or if they had been set one against the other, a minor engagement that would have some peripheral significance as to the ultimate outcome.

  The entrance to the Patriarch’s chambers was an adit that led to a hidden door. Beheim laid Giselle down at the mouth of the adit and knelt at her side, trying to detect some change in her that would signal her imminent recovery. Though the flickering of Paulina’s torch lent her false color, her pulse remained erratic and the corners of her mouth were downturned, as if she were in terrible pain.

  “What in hell’s name can he have given her?” Beheim said, smacking the flat of his hand against the wall.

  “Laudanum, perhaps.” Paulina shook her head glumly. “Vlad had many drugs, many poisons.”

  Beheim could not make up his mind whether to risk judging Giselle, to take the chance that she would survive judgment, or to do nothing and hope she would recover on her own. At last his indecisiveness persuaded him that the time was not right for judgment. He would see how things stood once he returned from his audience with the Patriarch.

  If he returned.

  There was no point in dwelling on that.

  “Wait with her,” he told Paulina. “Be patient. I don’t know how long this will take.”

  She made no reply, but he needed none to confirm her fidelity. He remembered how it had been immediately after he had succumbed to Agenor. He had not been able to take his eyes off the man; he had cataloged his every twitch and habit: how Agenor’s laugh descended into a hoarse, broken chuckle; how he sometimes would throw back his head in an almost feminine gesture before speaking; how he would fold his right arm across his chest when in a deep study, bracing his left elbow on the right hand, his left hand held open as if to catch the substance of his thought that was due at any moment to be spat forth from his forehead. Paulina was, as Beheim himself once had been, utterly captivated, enraptured, staring at him with unmodulated adoration.

  From his waist he removed the dagger he had taken from the study and handed it to Paulina. “Should anyone of the Family find you here, you must kill Giselle and then yourself. I realize this is a harsh command. But, believe me, you will both suffer less that way.”

  She gazed at him through strands of blond hair, as mutely adoring as a hound. He was disaffected by her single-mindedness, and this disaffection was not related to who she was, he realized, but to the character of the relationship, the same relationship he had with Giselle. It struck him as unchallenging now, devoid of intrigue. The pleasure he had once taken from such dominance seemed childish, and looking at the two of them, he understood that though they were useful to him, neither of them, not even Giselle, was as dear as he might have thought. It was Alexandra, a woman for whom at times he could manufacture a substantial hatred, and whom he was probably going to try to kill, who challenged and intrigued him. Alexandra who fired his imagination. Alexandra whose mysterious and doubtless pathological obsessions stimulated his own obsessions. As far as Giselle and Paulina were concerned, he had reached a point of development from which there was no returning; all his declarations of love and responsibility for Giselle had, he saw, been a means of holding on to the familiar, the known, a hedge against the uncertaintie
s of his new life. He refused to admit to this completely, telling himself that by thinking this way, he was attempting to cushion his sensibilities against the likelihood of Giselle’s death; yet as he prepared to enter the Patriarch’s chambers, he felt that this would be a final parting and was dismayed by his relative lack of emotion, the watered-down quality of his guilt and affection. It seemed he was more engaged by the prospect of facing a perilous future than he was of clinging to the security of his past.

  “Be watchful,” he said to Paulina. “You mustn’t fall asleep.”

  He thought there should be something else to tell her, something that would give her faith in his eventual return; but it was not in him. Nor could he bring himself to look at Giselle, humiliated by her steadfastness and her sacrifice. He only wanted to leave them, to put them from mind for a while at least. He took a quick step away, but as he started along the adit Paulina caught up his hand and kissed it, and would not release him until he had kissed her in return and comforted her with lies.

  On passing through the hidden door, Beheim stepped out onto a stone pier extending from the bottom of an enormous chamber—some three hundred feet in height, he reckoned; perhaps half that at its widest—and was met with a sight that, as its particulars came clear, spiked his backbone with cold and prickled the hairs on the back of his neck. There was no light source, at least none he could detect. Yet there was light. The chamber was filled with an eerie, grainy, blue radiance; it seemed something akin to the humming silence and the cold and an ozonelike stink, as if light had been transformed into a liquid with these same properties. The radiance was sufficient to cast vague shadows, yet was so dim that it took several minutes before he could make out much of the detail of the place: bats making looping flights in the cobalt reaches; pornographic bas-reliefs on the walls, many having a melted look, like stalactites, giving the impression that they were natural productions of the rock that had not yet finished taking shape; the various piers and the passageways opening here and there above him, some with massive iron-bound doors, others mere cracks; more of the ubiquitous statuary—none of the figures he could see had faces, just blank ovals resting atop torsos both bestial and human. The most curious of these conceits, however, covered the floor of the chamber, which lay some twenty feet below and had been sculpted into a representation of thousands upon thousands of bleached, twisted, undernourished bodies with agonized features. The sculpture had been rendered with such a remarkable kinetic feeling, Beheim imagined that the bodies were inching along, slithering one over the other, all moving in the same direction, all trying to reach the same unguessable goal. And then, to his horror, he saw that, indeed, they were in motion, they were not stone but flesh, alive in some measure, enlivened, perhaps, by a tendril of the Patriarch’s will.