Dark Enchantment (29 page)

‘Then one summer’s evening she had bathed in the spring by the eastern foot of the hill, where the water of the dead runs through the culvert under the wall into the city of the living, and she was sitting upon the pool’s edge in the last light, combing out her wet hair. She had wrapped a pall-cloth from a bier about her damp body. It was an evening very like this. And she looked around at a small noise to see that her host had arrived unannounced and was sitting just behind her in his robe of grey. He did that, you see. She would never know when he was coming, or see him arrive. He would simply be there. Then her host, whose name she knew by now was Mor –’

The ghoul cut her off with a hiss, revealing teeth designed to break open thigh bones.

The woman looked at it without fear. ‘Whose name is not spoken except during holy rites,’ she amended.

The ghoul glibbered.

‘The sorcerer? I will call him the sorcerer if you prefer. The sorcerer gave the maiden a comb made of ivory and gold that day. He often brought her presents, strange things that she kept simply out of delight: a lyre made of a tortoise shell; a
pair
of silver trefoil brooches; a mask of beaten gold; a necklace of jade so heavy that it crushed her breasts; a cloak of feathers as brightly coloured and iridescent as the wings of butterflies. She had no use for of any them, except for one that was clearly the tip of an ivory tusk, curiously carved, for which instinct and need had tutored her inexperienced hands, and which she had grown greatly fond of. But the comb was of use to her that moment, better than her fingers. She began to work it through the tangles of her long hair.

‘“Let me comb your hair for you,” said the sorcerer. It was something he had never suggested before.

‘So, sitting between his knees with her back to him and holding the pall-cloth closed over her breast, she let him work the fragile ivory teeth through her locks. His hands were unhurried and careful. She liked the feel of them on her hair, the soft tugs of her scalp, the shivers that worked down her spine as an accidental brush of a finger tickled the nape of her neck. She could see his pale foot, as bare as the feet of the dead, which emerged from under the hem of his robe and rested on the step next to her. She could feel the solidity of his thigh and knee as she leant against him. They did not talk. He never spoke very much around her, though he seemed to seek her company. His quiet hands, his dark eyes, the hint of a hooded smile now and then, were all she had from him to think on through her days alone.

‘She watched him twine her dark locks about his pale fingers, as if appreciating the contrast in colour. When he began to stroke her neck she shivered with pleasure and made no protest. After a moment’s hesitation he moved again, his fingertips caressing her skin, tracing the lines of her vertebrae, the curve of her shoulder, the hidden paths of her veins. The pleasure of the sensation was pure and elemental. She wanted
to
arch like a cat and purr, but she forced herself not to wriggle out of terror that he would stop. She was not used to being touched. No human had hugged her or patted her hair or held her hand in years, and her reaction to this now was almost too intense to bear. Her lips parted and her breath came quicker between them. Her eyelids fluttered, suddenly heavy, her eyes unable to focus.

‘“Do you like this?” he whispered, his lips close to her ear. The question was too ingenuous; it did not do justice to the riot of sensation his fingers were evoking, so she only murmured agreement. In response his fingers slipped around to the front of her throat and stroked her down to her collarbones and up to her chin, which she raised for him. Her pulse was beating harder, faster, and she knew he could feel it. “Yes. You like it,” he said, and “Yes,” she replied.

‘“Your skin is so warm.” His voice was low. “Life burns under it, like sunlight.” His fingers descended to her breastbone and at his touch there she spasmed with shock, unable to help herself, and he cupped his other hand about the swell of her shoulder to still her. Then gently he drew the cloth from her grasp and let it drop, baring her breasts. She made a little noise then in her throat, her hands curved uselessly in mid-air, neither defending her modesty nor knowing where to go. Making up for the loss of the garment, a blush warmed her from top to toe. Long pale fingers swept down, tracing the curve and swell of her flesh, circling a nipple which tingled to aching. “You have grown and changed, yet you are still Zulkais, my necropolis child. I hardly know what to do with you.”

‘“Do this!” she told him, and heard him smile. “And this?” he asked. His cool fingers found their target and closed upon the little bud of flesh, teasing with little circular caresses. Her nipple stirred to his touch, stiffening at once, her areola
dimpling.
She felt suddenly as if her skin, too alive with sensation, did not belong to her at all, that it was as strange as a new garment. She leant back into him, moaning a little, as he tugged at her. “So soft,” he murmured: “So tender. You are too young, Zulkais.” The maiden protested at that. He sighed then and his fingers played on her one after another like a harpist striking rippling chords. “Not too young for love. But too young to love me.”

‘She pressed her face against his arm, the grey robe rough against her cheek, and begged, “Don’t stop.” He slid his other hand down her spine and began to rub her back, low down, his fingers pressing into the muscle. She felt as if her whole body might open to let him in, as if her bones were turning to water. “Do you know what you want?” he asked, and though she did because she had watched birds and animals and the
ghûls
and remembered enough of life outside the walls of her sanctuary, she could not bring herself to answer except by moving to his touch. She knew she wanted this to go on. She did not know how she could have lived so long without this exquisite taunting pleasure.

‘His second question was, “Do you know what you’re doing?” and his voice by that time betrayed a huskiness, a strain. “You’ll show me,” she moaned, capturing his hand and moving it across to the other breast. “Show me how.”

‘He cupped that breast, hefting it to a smooth bulge, the nipple poking out dark between his fingers. His other hand, kneading her spine, had turned her lower body to molten turmoil and she could feel it oozing out of her, hot and wet. “Pleasure is hardly my domain,” he said. “But release, certainly.”

‘She could stand it no longer; she pushed back against him, wriggling up from between his thighs into his lap, driven by the instinct to press herself to him. Taller and bulkier, he took
her
weight as if it were nothing. He wrapped his arms about her, one hand on her body stroking her from breast to thigh, one tipping back her head so he could kiss her throat, pinning her against his torso. His mouth was no warmer than his fingertips and she shivered delightfully, urging him with little whimpers of need. His hand slid over her damp pubic curls and down between her thighs. He gripped tight, his fingers mired in the slipperiness of her split sex, pressing at the portal of her maiden hole. And she felt it, under that strong grasp: ripples of pleasure running through her whole body, wave after tiny wave. It wasn’t a full climax – it was too faint, more like a shadow that runs on the ground ahead of the solid body that casts it. But it steadied her and she grew still, gasping, in his arms.

‘“Zulkais, do you know who I am?” he asked, and that question, the third in a row, fell with audible weight. She sought to focus her mind and answered him, “You are the god of the
ghûls
.” “And that does not trouble you,” he wondered, but she answered with a trembling voice: “Why should it?”

‘He stood then, holding her as she slipped from his lap, and turned her to face him. She tried to press against his robed body, but he held her a little from him and her belly clenched. He stooped and picked up her pall-cloth, knotting it at her shoulder, then kissed her mouth as softly as the fall of petals, his hand cupping her cheek. She stared up at his grave face as he told her, “I need to take you from this place before this goes further. There are things you should know.”

‘She shivered at that. The afterwash of his touch was fading into an ache of tormented loss. “I don’t want to leave,” she protested. So he promised that it would be for a little while only, and though she said how frightened she was of Out There,
he
would not change his mind, telling her, “I’ll be with you. No one will see either of us.”

‘So he took her away. He wrapped her in his arm and stepped with her between the leaves of the world with less fuss or effort than the release of a last pent breath.’

The young woman fell silent for a moment. The ghoul’s unblinking eyes reflected the twilight like dim moons. If its face had been human, an observer might have ascribed to it an expression of fascinated horror.

‘He took her to many places and showed her many things. The house of a tailor, where a young mother dozed over a crib and a cat lay purring where it had no right to be. A gallows tree by a harbour. A pyre lit for a king who did not lie there alone. The back alley behind a tavern, where a man lay in a puddle darker than the rain that fell upon his upturned face. A battlefield after nightfall, where stooped figures moved about the fallen with lanterns in one hand and knives in the other. A ship locked tight in sea ice, its rigging curtained in frost. “I am here,” he said. “In this place with you, and in that. In every tomb and in every house I am there. Do you understand?” And she nodded, wide-eyed.

‘Now, for the first time, she doubted him. “Am I seeing you as you really are?” she asked. He answered her: “You are seeing me as I am to you. A man may be an indulgent father, a zealous lover, a loyal friend and a cruel master all at the same time. Which is real?”

‘She looked long and hard into his eyes then, but he did not change, did not become the thing she had once been dismayed to see from the corner of her vision. He brushed back a strand of hair from her face, and spoke softly, as if his words were too painful to say louder: “Know this. You will not get from me the things you might get from a mortal man who loved you. Neither children nor grandchildren, neither growing old
together
nor my growing to need you, neither honour nor a place in the wider world. From me you will only get sunset moments.”

‘Then he took her to one last place. It was a room the maiden did not recognise, filled with things that glowed and flashed and beeped that she could not name, with a bed of a kind she had never seen before, and in the bed a woman she did not know. There were tubes puncturing her arms, and she seemed to be asleep. Her dark hair was cut short and though she was not fat there was something doughy and unformed about her face and a grey cast to her skin. The maid shrank back against the sorcerer, asking, “Who is this? I don’t know her.”

‘“Years ago,” he said quietly, “when she was fourteen, she and her father entered the wrong neighbourhood and were set upon by thieves. She was beaten unconscious. Her father was set alight in his own automobile and died. She has been in a coma since that day and will never wake up. She might die in fifty years’ time or tomorrow. In the meantime a part of her has taken flight down the seven hundred and seventy steps below the mansions of her dreams, to another place.”

‘The maiden’s heart felt like a stone sitting under her ribs. She didn’t understand all the words he’d used, but she understood their import. “I don’t recognise her face,” she whispered, and he replied, “She grows old faster than you do. She is now thirty-one. What do you want me to do, Zulkais? The choice is yours.”

‘“I want to go home, to Krisilith,” said she.

‘So in the blink of an eye he took her back to the city of the dead, and when they arrived on the balcony of the palace of the dead barons it was still sunset just as it was when they had left, though it might have been another day entirely, for very little changed in that place. And it seemed to the maiden
that
as she stood upon the high building she might also still be sitting by the spring combing out her hair, and she might also be lying alone in a room, asleep for ever. Her legs were suddenly wobbly with shock. The sorcerer set her down upon a couch made for the dead barons to hold public audience upon. For a moment he knelt at her feet, looking up into her face, his hands touching her ankles.

‘“Why did you have to show me those things?” she asked, unable to speak in more than a whisper. “I would have been happy not knowing.” To which he answered, “Yes. But to leave you ignorant would have been to … take advantage. I want to be fair to you.”

‘She opened her eyes wide at that. “Fair? You?” she said, which made him bite his lip. “You are right,” he acknowledged. “I am neither fair nor just. Only, sometimes, I am merciful.”

‘“Not this day,” she told him, and he looked thoughtful, answering, “Yes. Already you have changed me a little, Zulkais. What are you going to do next?”

‘“Me?” she asked.

‘“You, Zulkais. I will not make the choice for you. You are free.”

‘She closed her eyes. When she opened them again a heartbeat later he was no longer kneeling in front of her but standing at the stone balustrade with his back to the view over the necropolis and the wall and the city of the living. She shivered because she could still feel the lingering touch of his fingertips on her ankles. Though no bigger than any other man he seemed to fill her field of view, fill the landscape beyond, fill all the world. And he watched her, his face sombre and motionless and only his hair shifting a little in the breeze, like a drift of ashes from a cremation platform. The maiden, caught in his implacable gaze, heard again the questions he had asked:
Do
you know who I am? Do you know what you are doing? Do you know what you want?

‘And in the silence she heard the answers inside her. Her heart was beating fast, not just with fear but with vertigo. She had looked into an abyss.

‘Then she rose up and went over to the sorcerer, and put her hands upon his chest. She heard the intake of his breath, but he did not move. He might as well have been a memorial statue. She had to stretch up to bring her lips to his, hesitantly, with many false starts, her heart in her throat, her eyes brimming with tears. She kissed him.