Tanith Lee a to Z

  TANITH LEE

  A TO Z

  Tanith Lee

  First published in 2018 by Telos Publishing, 139 Whitstable Road, Canterbury, Kent CT2 8EQ, United Kingdom

  Telos Publishing values feedback if you have any comments about this book please email feedback@telos.co.uk

  Tanith Lee A-Z © 2018 Tanith Lee

  ISBN: 978-1-84583-976-5

  Cover Art: © Martin Baines 2018

  Cover design: David J Howe

  Back cover illustration: © Carolyn Edwards

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person then please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  CONTENTS

  All the Birds of Hell

  Black and White Sky

  Cain

  The Devil’s Rose

  The Eye in the Heart

  Flowers for Faces, Thorns for Feet

  God and the Pig

  The Hill

  In the City of Dead Night

  Jedella Ghost

  Kiss Kiss

  Lost in the World

  A Madonna of the Machine

  The Nightmare’s Tale

  Oh, Shining Star

  The Pandora Heart

  Queens in Crimson

  Rherlotte

  Snowdrop

  These Beasts

  Under Fog (The Wreckers)

  Virgile, The Widow

  White As Sin, Now

  Xoanon

  Yellow and Red

  Zelle’s Thursday

  About the Author

  Copyright Information

  All the Birds of Hell

  1

  Once they left the city, the driver started to talk. He went on talking during the two hour journey, almost without pause. His name was Argenty, but the dialogue was all about his wife. She suffered from what had become known as Twilight Sickness. She spent all day in their flat staring at the electric bulbs. At night she walked out into the streets and he would have to go and fetch her. She had had frostbite several times. He said she had been lovely twenty years ago, though she had always hated the cold.

  Henrique Tchaikov listened. He made a few sympathetic sounds. It was as hopeless to try to communicate with the driver, Argenty, as to shut him up. Normally Argenty drove important men from the Bureau, to whom he would not be allowed to speak a word, probably not even Good-day. But Tchaikov was a minor bureaucrat. If Argenty had had a better education and more luck, he might have been where Tchaikov was.

  Argenty’s voice became like the landscape beyond the cindery cement blocks of the city, monotonous, inevitably irritating, depressing, useless, sad.

  It was the fifteenth year of winter.

  Now almost forty, Tchaikov could remember the other seasons of his childhood, even one long hot summer full of liquid colours and now-forgotten smells. By the time he was twelve years old, things were changing forever. In his twenties he saw them go, the palaces of summer, as Eynin called them in his poetry. Tchaikov had been twenty-four when he watched the last natural flower, sprung pale green out of the public lawn, die before him – as Argenty’s wife was dying, in another way.

  The Industrial Winter, so it was termed. The belching chimneys and the leaking stations with their cylinders of poison. The rotting hulks along the shore like deadly whales.

  The doctor says she’ll ruin her eyes staring at the lights all day 5’ Argenty droned on.

  ‘There’s a new drug, isn’t there?’ Tchaikov tried.

  But Argenty took no notice. Probably, when alone, he talked to himself.

  Beyond the car, the snowscape spread like heaps of bedclothes, some soiled and some clean. The grey ceiling of the sky bulged low.

  Argenty broke off. He said, ‘There’s the wolf factory.’

  Tchaikov turned his head.

  Against the greyness-whiteness, the jagged black of the deserted factory which had been taken over by wolves was the only land mark.

  ‘They howl often, sound like the old machinery. You hear them from the Datch’a.’

  ‘Yes, they told me I would.’

  ‘Look, some of them running about there.’

  Tchaikov noted the black forms of the wolves, less black than the factory walls and gates, darting up and over the snow heaps, and away around the building. Although things did live out here, it was strange to see something alive.

  Then they came down the slope, the chained snow-tyres grating and punching, and Tchaikov saw the mansion across the plain.

  ‘The river came in here,’ said Argenty. ‘Under the floor.’

  A plantation of pine trees remained about the house. Possibly they were dead, carved out only in frozen snow. The Datch’a had two domed towers, a balustraded verandi above a flight of stairs that gleamed like white glass. When the car drove up, he could see two statues at the foot of the steps that had also been kept clear of snow. They were of a stained brownish marble, a god and goddess, both naked and smiling through the brown stains that spread from their mouths.

  There were electric lights on in the Datch’a, from top to bottom, three or f our floors of them in long, arched windows.

  But as the car growled to a halt, Argenty gave a grunt. ‘Look,’ he said again. ‘Look. Up there.’

  They got out and stood on the snow. The cold broke round them like sheer disbelief, but they knew it by now. They stared up. As happened only very occasionally, a lacuna had opened in the low cloud. A dim pink island of sky appeared, and over it floated a dulled lemon slice, dissolving, half transparent, the sun.

  Argenty and Tchaikov waited, transfixed, watching in silence. Presently the cloud folded together again and the sky, the sun, vanished.

  ‘I can’t tell her,’ said Argenty. ‘My wife. I can’t tell her I saw the sun. Once it happened in the street. She began to scream. I had to take her to the hospital. She wasn’t the only case.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Tchaikov.

  He had said this before, but now for the first time Argenty seemed to hear him. ‘Thank you.’

  Argenty insisted on carrying Tchaikov’s bag to the top of the slippy, gleaming stair, then he pressed the buzzer. The door was of steel and wood, with a glass panel of octople glazing, almost opaque. Through it, in the bluish yellow light, a vast hall could just be made out, with a floor of black and white marble.

  A voice spoke through the door apparatus.

  ‘Give your name.’

  ‘Henrique Tchaikov. Number sixteen stroke Y.’

  ‘You’re late.’

  Tchaikov stood on the top step, explaining to a door. He was enigmatic. There was always a great deal of this.

  ‘The road from Kroy was blocked by an avalanche. It had to be cleared.’

  ‘All right. Come in. Mind the dog, she may be down there.’

  ‘Dog,’ said Argenty. He put his hand into his coat for his gun.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Tchaikov. ‘They always keep a dog here.’

  ‘Why ?’ said Argenty blankly.

  Tchaikov said, ‘A guard dog. And for company, I suppose.’

  Argenty glanced up, towards the domed towers. The walls were reinforced by black cement. The domes were tiled black, mortared by snow. After the glimpse of sun, there wa
s again little colour in their world.

  ‘Are they … is it up there?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps.’

  ‘Take care,’ said Argenty surprisingly as the door made its unlocking noise.

  Argenty was not allowed to loiter. Tchaikov watched him get back into the car, undo the dash panel and take a swig of Vodka. The car turned and drove slowly away, back across the plain.

  The previous curator did not give Tchaikov his name. A tall thin man with slicked, black hair, Tchaikov knew he was known as Ouperin.

  Ouperin showed Tchaikov the map of the mansion, and the pamphlet of house rules. He only mentioned one, that the solarium must not be used for more than one hour per day; it was expensive. He asked if Tchaikov had any questions, wanted to see anything. Tchaikov said it would be fine.

  They met the dog in the corridor outside the ballroom, near where Ouperin located what he called his office.

  She was a big dog, perhaps part Cuvahl and part Husky, muscular and well-covered, with a thick silken coat like the thick pile carpets, ebony and fawn, with white round her muzzle and on her belly and paws, and two gold eyes that merely slanted at them for a second as she galloped by.

  ‘Dog! Here dog,’ Ouperin called, but she ignored him; prancing on, with balletic shakes of her fringed fur, into the ballroom, where the crystal chandeliers hung down twenty feet on ropes of bronze. ‘She only comes when she’s hungry. There are plenty of steaks for her in the Cold Room. She goes out a lot,’ said Ouperin. ‘Her door’s down in the kitchen. Electronic. Nothing else can get in.’

  They visited the cold room, which was very long, and massively shelved, behind a sort of air-lock. The room was frigid; the natural weather was permitted to sustain it. The ice on high windows looked like armour.

  Ouperin took two bottles of Vodka and a bunch of red grapes, frozen peerless in a wedge of ice.

  They sat in his office, along from the ballroom. A fire blazed on the hearth.

  ‘I won’t say I’ve enjoyed it here,’ said Ouperin.

  ‘But there are advantages. There are some videos and magazines in the suite. You know what I mean. Apart from the library. If you get … hot.’

  Tchaikov nodded politely.

  Ouperin said, ‘The first thing you’ll do when I go is look at them, won’t you?’

  ‘Probably,’ said Tchaikov.

  ‘You know,’ said Ouperin. ‘You get bored with them. At first they remind you of the fairy story. What is it? The princess who sleeps. Then you just get bored.

  Tchaikov said nothing. They drank vodka, and at seventeen hours, five o’clock, as the white world outside began to turn glowing blue, a helicopter came and landed on the plain. Ouperin took his bags and went out to the front door of the Datch’a, and the stair. ‘Have some fun,’ he said.

  He ran sliding down the steps and up to the helicopter. He scrambled in like a boy on holiday. It rose as it had descended in a storm of displaced snow. When its noise finally faded through the sky, Tchaikov heard the wolves from the wolf factory howling over the slopes. The sky was dark blue now, navy, without a star. If ever the moon appeared, the moon was blue. The pines settled. A few black boughs showed where the helicopter’s winds had scoured off the snow. They were alive. But soon the snow began to come down again, to cover them.

  Tchaikov returned to the cold room. He selected a chicken and two steaks and vegetables, and took them to the old stone-floored kitchen down the narrow steps. The new kitchen was very small, a little bright cubicle inside the larger one. He put the food into the thawing cabinet, and then set the program on the cooker. The dog came in as he was doing this, and stood outside the lighted box. Once they had thawed, he put the bloody steaks down for her on a dish, and touched her ruffed head as she bent to eat. She was a beautiful dog, but wholly uninterested in him. She might be there in case of trouble, but there never would be trouble. No one stayed longer than six or eight months. The curatorship at the Datch’a was a privilege, and an endurance test.

  When his meal was ready, Tchaikov carried it to the Card Room or office, and ate, with the television showing him in colour the black and white scenes of the snow and the cities. The card room fire burned on its synthetic logs, the gas cylinder faintly whistling. He drank Vodka and red wine. Sometimes, in spaces of sound, he heard the wolves. And once; looking from the ballroom, he saw the dog, lit by all the windows, trotting along the ice below the pines.

  At midnight, when the television stations were shut down to conserve power, and most of the lights in the cities, although not here, would be dimmed, Tchaikov got into the manually operated elevator, and went up into the second dome, to the top floor.

  He had put on again his greatcoat, his hat and gloves.

  The elevator stopped at another little air-lock. Beyond, only the cold-pressure lights could burn, glacial blue. Sometimes they blinked, flickered. An angled stair led to a corridor, which was wide, and shone as if highly polished. At the end of the corridor were an annexe and the two broad high doors of glass. It was possible to look through the glass, and for a while he stood there, in the winter of the dome, staring in like a child.

  It had been, and still was, a bedroom, about ten metres by eleven. His flat in the city would fit easily inside it.

  The bedroom had always been white, the carpets and the silken drapes, even the tassels had been a mottled white, like milk, edged with gilt. And the bed was white. So that now, just as the snow-world outside resembled a white tumbled bed, the bed was like the tumbled snow.

  The long windows were black with night, but a black silvered by ice. Ice had formed too, in the room, in long spears that hung from the ceiling, where once a sky had been painted, a sky-blue sky with rosy clouds, but they had darkened and died, so now the sky was like old grey paint with flecks of rimy plaster showing through.

  The mirrors in the room had cracked from the cold and formed strange abstract patterns that seemed to mean something. Even the glass doors had cracked, and were reinforced.

  From here you could not properly see the little details of the room, the meal held perfect under ice, the ruined ornaments and paintings. Nor, properly, the couple on the bed.

  Tchaikov drew the electronic key from his pocket and placed it in the mechanism of the doors. It took a long time to work, the cold-current not entirely reliable. The lighting blinked again, a whole second of black. Then the doors opened and the lights steadied, and Tchaikov went through.

  The carpet, full of ice crystals, crunched under his feet which left faint marks that would dissipate. His breath was smoke.

  On a chest with painted panels, where the paint had scattered out, stood a white statue, about a metre high, that had broken from the cold, and an apple of rouged glass that had also broken, and somehow bled.

  The pictures on the walls were done for. Here and there, a half of a face peeped out from the mossy corrosion, like the sun he had seen earlier in the cloud. Hot-house roses in a vase had turned to black coals, petrified, petals not fallen.

  Their meal stood on the little mosaic table. It had been a beautiful meal, and neatly served. An amber fish, set with dark jade fruits, a salad that had blackened like the roses but kept its shape of dainty leaves and fronds. A flawless cream round, with two slivers cut from it, reminding him of the quartering of an elegant clock. The Champagne was all gone, but for the beads of palest gold left at the bottom of the two goblets rimmed with silver. The bottle of tablets was mostly full. They had taken enough only to sleep, then turned off the heating, leaving the cold to do the rest.

  The Last Supper of Love, Eynin had called it, in his poem, This Place.

  Tchaikov went over to the bed and looked down at them.

  The man, Xander, wore evening dress, a tuxedo, a silk shirt with a tunic collar. On the jacket were pinned two military ribbons and a Knight’s Cross. His tawny hair was sleeked back. His face was grave and very strong, a very masculine face, a very clean, calm face. His eyes, appar
ently, were green, but invisible behind the marble lids.

  She, the woman, Tamura, was exquisite, not beautiful but immaculate, and so delicate and slender. She could have danced on air, just as Eynin said, in her sequined pumps. Her long white dress clung to a slight and nearly adolescent body with the firm full breasts of a young woman. Her brunette hair spread on the pillows with the long stream of pearls from her neck. On the middle finger of her left hand, she wore a burnished ruby the colour and size of a cherry.

  Like Xander, Tamura was calm, quite serene.

  It seemed they had had no second thoughts, eating their last meal, drinking their wine, perhaps making love.

  Then swallowing the pills and lying back for the sleep of winter, the long cold that encased and preserved them like perfect candy in a globe of ice.

  They had been here nine years. It was not so very long.

  Tchaikov looked at them. After a few minutes he turned and went back across the room, and again his foot-marks temporarily disturbed the carpet. He locked the doors behind him.

  In the curator’s suite below, he put on the ordinary dimmed yellow lamp and read Eynin’s poem again, sipping black tea, while the synthetic fire crackled at the foot of his hard bed.

  We watched the summer palaces

  Sail from this place,

  Like liners to the sea

  Of yesterday.

  Tchaikov put the book aside and switched off the light and fire. The fire died quite slowly, as if real. Outside he heard the wolves howling like the old factory machinery.

  Behind his closed eyelids, he saw Tamura’s ruby, red as the cherries and roses in the elite florist’s shops of the city. Her eyes, apparently, were dark.

  Above him, as he lay on his back, the lovers slept on in their bubble of loving snow.

  2