Ghosteria Volume 1: The Stories (Ghostgeria) Page 3

  At which the whole floor of the pavilion rushed upwards, with the monster squatting impassively atop it. Revealed beneath was a sort of metal cage, big enough to contain a man. Into this cage all visitors must step, and the frightened visitor knew as much.

  Just as he had known of the hill, the pavilion, the glare of unseen lamps and the horrendous brazen guardian. For down the trade roads and throughout the river ports of Vaim, word of these wonders had spread, along with the news that Subyrus, Master of the Ten Mechanicae, would buy with gold objects of sorcery – providing they were fabulous, bizarre and, preferably, unique.

  The visitor entered the cage, which was the second of the Ten Mechanicae (the toad being the first).The cage instantly plunged into the hollow hill.

  His entrails seemingly left plastered to the pavilion roof by the rapid descent, this visitor clutched to himself the leather satchel he had brought, and thought alternately of riches and death.

  Subyrus sat in a chair of green quartz in a hall hung with drapes the colours of charred roses and black panthers. A clear pink fire burned on the wide hearth that gave off the slight persuasive scent of strawberries. Subyrus studied the fire quietly with deep-lidded dark eyes. He had the face of a beautiful skull, long hands and a long leopardine body to concur with that image. The robe of murky murderous crimson threw into exotic relief his luminous and unblemished pallor, and the strange dull bronze of his long hair that seemed carved rather than combed.

  When the cage dashed down into the hall and bounced on its cushioned buffers, throwing the occupant all awry, Subyrus looked up, unsmiling. He regarded the man who staggered from the cage clutching a satchel, with none of the cruel arid expressions or gestures the man had obviously anticipated.

  Subyrus’s regard was compounded of pity, a vague inquiry, an intense drugged boredom.

  It was, if anything, worse than sadism and savagery.

  A melodramatic laugh and a glimpse of wolf-fangs would have been somehow preferable to those opaque and disenchanted eyes.

  “Well?” Subyrus said. Less a question than a plea – Oh, for the love of the gods, interest me in something. The plea of a man (if he were that alone) to whom other men were insects, and their deeds pages of a book to be turned and turned in the vain hope of a quickening.

  The man with the satchel quailed.

  “Magician-Lord – I had heard – you wished marvels to be brought to you that you might...acquire them?”

  Subyrus sighed.

  “You heard correctly. What then have you brought?”

  “In this satchel, lordly one – something beyond –”

  “Beyond what?” Subyrus’s sombre eyes widened, but only with disbelief at the tedium this salesman was causing him. “Beyond my wildest dreamings, perhaps you meant say? I have no wild dreamings. I should welcome them.”

  In a panic, the man with the satchel blurted something. The sort of overplay he might have used on an ordinary customer; it had become a habit with him to attempt startlement in order to gain the upper hand. But not here, where he should have left well alone.

  “What did you say?” Subyrus asked.

  “I said – I said –”

  “Yes?”

  “That the Lady Lunaria of Vaim – was wild dream enough.”

  Now the satchel-man stood transfixed at his own idiocy, his very bones knocking together in wretched fright. Indeed, Subyrus had lost his mask of boredom, but it had been replaced merely by an appalling contempt.

  “Have I become a laughing stock in Vaim?”

  The query was idle, mild. Suddenly the man with the satchel realised the contempt of the magician was self-directed. The man slumped and answered, truthfully: “No one would dare laugh, Magician-Lord, at anything of yours. The length of the river, men pale at your name. But the other thing – you can hardly blame them for envying you the Lady Lunaria.” He glanced up. Had he said the right words, at last? The magician did not respond. The frightened satchel-man had space to brood on the story then current in the city, that the Master of the Ten Mechanicae had taken for his mistress the most famous whore this side of the northern ocean, and that Lunaria Vaimian ruled Subyrus as if he were a toothless lion, ordering him to this and that, demanding costly gifts, setting him errands, and even in the matter of the bedchamber, herself saying when. Some claimed the story was an invention of Lunaria’s, a dangerous game she played with Subyrus’s reputation. Others said that Subyrus himself had sent the fancy abroad to see if any dared mock him, so he might cut them down with sorcery in some vicious and perverse fashion.

  But the satchel-man had come off the mountain roads to Vaim. A stranger, he had never seen Lunaria for himself, nor, till tonight, the magician-lord.

  “Well?” Subyrus said drowsily.

  The satchel-man jumped in his skin.

  “I suggest,” Subyrus said, “you show me this rare treasure beyond wild dreamings. You may mention its origin and how you came by it. You may state its ability, if any, and demonstrate. You may then name your price. But, I beg you, no more sales patter.”

  Shivering, the satchel-man undid the clasps and drew from the leather a padded bag. From the bag he produced a velvet box. In the box he revealed a sapphire glimmer wrapped in feathers. The feathers drifted to the floor as he lifted out a vase of blue crystal, about a foot in length, elongated of neck, with a broad base of oddly alternating swelling and tapering design. The castellated lip was sealed by a stopper that appeared to be a single rose-opal.

  Prudently silent, and holding the vase before him like a talisman, the visitor approached Subyrus’s chair.

  “Charming,” Subyrus said. “But what does it do?”

  “My lord,” the satchel-man whispered, “my lord – I can simply recount what it is supposed to have done – and to do. I myself have not the skill to test it.”

  “Then you must tell me immediately how you came by it. Look at me,” Subyrus added. His voice was all at once no longer indolent but cool and terrible. Unwilling, but without choice, the satchel-man raised his head. Subyrus was turning a great black ring, round and round, on his finger. At first it was like a black snake darting in and out, then like a black eye, opening and closing.

  Subyrus sighed again, depressed at the ease with which most human resistance could be overcome.

  “Speak now.”

  The satchel-man dutifully began.

  Mesmerised by the black ring, he spoke honestly, without either embroidery or omission.

  2. The Satchel-Man’s Tale

  An itinerant scavenger by trade, the satchel-man had happened on a remote town of the far north, and learned of a freakish enterprise taking place in the vicinity. The tomb of an ancient king had been located in the heart of one of the tall iron-blue crags that towered above the town. Scholars of the town, fascinated by the tomb’s antiquity, had hired gangs of workmen to break into the inner chamber and prise off the lid of the sarcophagus. At this event, the satchel-man was a lurking bystander. He had made up to several of the scholars in the hope of some arcane jewel dropping into his paws. But in the end, all that had been uncovered were dust, stench, decay and some brown grinning bones – clutched in the digits of which was a vase of blue crystal stoppered with a rose-opal.

  The find being solitary, the scholars were obliged to offer it to the town’s Tyrant.

  He graciously accepted the vase, attempted to pull out the opal stopper; failed, attempted to smash the vase in order to release the stopper; failed, ordered various pounding devices to crush the vase – which also failed, called for one of the scholars and demanded he investigate the nature of the vase forthwith. This scholar, who had leanings in the sorcerous direction, had also become the host of the parasitic satchel-man. The satchel-man had spun some yarn of ill luck, which the scholar, an unworldly intellectual, credited.

  So the satchel-man was informed as to the scholar’s magical assaults on the vase. Not that the satchel-man actually attended the rituals first hand (as, but for the mesmerism, h
e would have assured Subyrus he had). Yet he was advised of them over supper, when the fraught scholar complained of his unsuccess. Then late one night, as the satchel-man sprawled on a couch with his host’s brandy pitcher, a fearsome yell echoed through the house. A second or so later, pale as steamed fish, the scholar stumbled into the room, and collapsed whimpering on the ground.

  The satchel-man gallantly revived the scholar with some of his own brandy. The scholar spoke.

  “It is sorcery of the Brink, the Abyss. More lethal than the sword, and more dreadful. In the hands of a Power, what mischief could it not encompass? What mischief it has encompassed.”

  “Have a little more brandy,” said the satchel-man, torn between curiosity, avarice and nerves. “Say more.”

  The scholar drank deep, grew sozzled, and elaborated in such a way that the hairs bristled on the satchel-man’s unclean neck.

  Searching an antique book, the scholar had discovered an unusual spell of Opening. This he had performed, and the rose-opal had jumped free of the mouth of the vase. Such a whirling had then occurred inside it that the scholar had become alarmed. The crystal seemed full of milk on the boil and milky lather foamed in the opening of the castellated mouth. In consternation, the scholar had given vent to numerous rhetorical questions, such as: “What shall I do?” and “What in the world does this bubbling portend?” Finally he voiced a rhetorical question that utilised the name of the ancient king: “What can King So-and-so have performed with such an artefact?”

  Rhetorical questions do not expect answers. But to this question an answer came.

  No sooner was the king’s name uttered than the frothing in the vase erupted outwards. A strand of this froth, proceeding higher than the rest from the vase’s mouth, gradually solidified. Within the space of half a minute, there balanced in the atmosphere above the vase, deadly white but perfectly formed, the foot-high figure of a man, lavishly bearded and elaborately clad, a barbaric diadem on his head. With a minute sneer, this figure addressed the scholar:

  “Normally, further ritual with greater accuracy is required. But since I was the last to enter, and since I have been within a mere four centuries, I respond to my name. Well, what do you wish, O absurd and gigantic fool?”

  A dialogue then ensued which had to do with the scholar’s astonishment and disbelief, and the white midget king’s utter irritation at, and scorn of, the scholar.

  In the course of this dialogue, however, the nature of the vase was specified.

  A magician had made it, though when and how was unsure. Its purpose was original, providing the correct magic had been activated by rite and incantation. That done, whoever might die – or whoever might be slain – in the close neighbourhood of the vase, their soul would be sucked into the crystal and imprisoned there till the ending of time, or at least time as mortal men know it. Since its creation, countless magicians, and others who had learned the relevant sorcery, had used the vase in this way, catching inside it the souls, or ghosts, of enemies, lovers and kindred for personal solace or entertainment. It might be reckoned (the king casually told the scholar) that seven thousand souls now inhabited the core of the vase. (“How is there room for so many?” the scholar cried. The king laughed. “I am not bound to answer questions. Therefore, I will do no more than assure you that room there is, and to spare.”) It appeared that whoever could name the vase-trapped ghosts by their exact appellations, might call them forth.

  They might then reply to interrogation – but only if the fancy took them to do so.

  The scholar, overwhelmed, dithered. At length the miniature being demanded leave to return into the vase, which the scholar had weakly granted. He had then flown downstairs to seek comfort from the satchel-man.

  The satchel-man was not comforting. He was insistent. The scholar must summon the king’s ghost up once again. Positively, the king would be able to tell them where the hoards of his treasure had been buried, for all kings left treasure hoards at death, if not in their tombs, then in some other spot. Was the scholar not a magus? He must recall the ghost and somehow coerce it into malleability, thereby unearthing incredible secrets of lore and (better) cash.

  The scholar, convinced by the satchel-man’s persistence and the dregs of the brandy, eventually resummoned the king’s ghost. Nothing happened. The scholar and the satchel-man strenuously reiterated the summons. Still nothing. It seemed the ghost had been right in hinting that the ritual was important. He had obeyed on the first occasion because his had been the last and newest soul in the vase, but he had no need to obey further without proper incentive.

  Then the scholar fell to philosophising and the satchel-man fell to cursing him. Presently the scholar turned the satchel-man out of his house. That night, while the scholar snored in brandy-pickled slumber, the satchel-man regained entry and stole the vase. It was not his first robbery, and his exit was swift from practice.

  Thereafter he wandered, endeavouring to locate a mage who knew the correct magic to name, draw forth and browbeat the ghosts in the vase. Or even merely to draw out the rose-opal stopper with which the scholar had inconsiderately recorked it.

  Months passed with the mission unaccomplished, and despair set in. Until the satchel-man caught word of the Magician-Lord Subyrus.

  To begin with, the satchel-man may have indulged in a dream of enlisting Subyrus’s aid, but rumour dissuaded him from this notion. In the long run, it seemed safer to sell the vase outright and be rid of the profitless item. If any mage alive could deal with the thing it was the Master of the Ten Mechanicae. And somehow the salesman did not think Subyrus would share his knowledge. To accept payment in gold seemed the wisest course.

  The satchel-man came to himself and saw the fire on the wide hearth had changed. It was green now, and perfumed with apples. The fire must be the third of the Mechanicae.

  Subyrus had not changed. Not at all.

  “And your price?” he gently murmured. His eyes were nearly shut.

  “Considering the treasure I forego in giving up the vase to your lordship–” The satchel-man meant to sound bold, succeeded in a whining tone.

  “And considering you will never reach that treasure, as you have no power over the vase yourself,” Subyrus amended, and shut his eyes totally from weariness.

  “Seven thousand vaimii,” stated the satchel-man querulously. “One for each of the seven thousand ghosts in the vase.”

  Subyrus’s lids lifted. He stared at the satchel-man and the satchel-man felt his joints loosen in horror. Then Subyrus smiled. It was the smile of an old, old man, dying of ennui, his mood lightened for a split second by the antics of a beetle on the wall.

  “That seems,” said Subyrus, “quite reasonable.”

  One hand moved lazily and the fourth of the Mechanicae manifested itself; it was a brazen chest which sprang from between the charred-rose draperies. Subyrus spoke to the chest, a compartment shot out and deposited a paralysing quantity of gold coins on the rugs at the satchel-man’s feet.

  “Seven thousand vaimii,” Subyrus said. “Count them.”

  “My lord, I would not suppose–”

  “Count them,” repeated the magician, without emphasis.

  Anxious not to offend, the satchel-man did as he was bid.

  He was not a particularly far-sighted man. He did not realise how long it would take him.

  A little over an hour later, fingers numb, eyes watering and spine unpleasantly locked, he slunk into the mechanical cage and was borne back to the surface. This time, his guts were left plastered to the lowermost floor of the hollow hill.

  Musically clinking, and in terror lest he himself should be robbed, the satchel-man limped hurriedly away through the starry and beautiful night.

  3. Proving the Vase

  The fire burned warmly black, and smelled of musk and ambergris. This was the aspect of the fire which Subyrus used to recall Lunaria to him. The idea of her threaded his muscles, his very bones, with an elusive excitement, not quite sexual, not qu
ite pleasing, not quite explicable. In this mood, he did not even visualise Lunaria Vaimian as a woman, or as any sort of object. Abstract, her memory possessed him and folded him round with an intoxicating, though distant and scarcely recognisable, agony.

  It was quite true that she, of the entire city of Vaim, defied him. She asked him continually for gifts, but she would not accept money or jewels. She wanted the benefits of his status as a magician. So he gave her a rose which endlessly bloomed, gloves that changed colour and material, a ring that could detect the lies of others and whistle thinly, to their discomfort. He collected sorcerous trinkets and bought them for gold, to give to her. In response to these gifts, Lunaria Vaimian admitted Subyrus to her couch. But she also dallied with other men. Twice she had shut her doors to the Master of the Ten Mechanicae. Once, when he had smitten the doors wide, she had said to him: “Do I anger you, lord? Kill me, then. But if you lie with me against my will, I warn you, mighty Subyrus, it will be poor sport.”

  On various occasions, she had publicly mocked him, struck him in the face, reviled his aptitude both for magic and love. Witnesses had trembled. Subyrus’s inaction surprised and misled them.

  They reckoned him besotted with a lovely harlot, and wondered at it, that he found her so indispensible he must accept her whims and never rebuke her for them. In fact, Lunaria was indispensible to the Magician-Lord, but not after the general interpretation.

  Her skin was like that dark brown spice called cinnamon, her eyes the darker shade of malt. On this sombreness was superimposed a blanching of blonde hair, streaked gold by sunlight and artifice in equal measure. Beautiful she was, but not much more beautiful than several women who had cast themselves at the feet of Subyrus, abject and yielding. Indeed, the entire metropolis and hinterland of Vaim knew and surrendered to him. All-powerful and all-feared and, with women who beheld his handsomeness and guessed at his intellect, all-worshipped. All that, save by Lunaria. Hence, her value. She was the challenge he might otherwise find in no person or sphere. The natural and the supernatural he could control, but not her. She was not abject nor easy. She did not yield. The exacerbation of her defiance quickened him and gave him a purpose, an excuse for his life, in which everything else might be won at a word.