Errantry, page 26
“True, though their bones are not interred here or anywhere else. Wang beetles are prodigious and indiscriminate eaters, though I was told that this one expired from gluttony and its carapace remains wedged within a forgotten corridor some hundreds of ells below us.”
“You possess a great deal of lore pertaining to this fortress,” observed Saloona.
“Hayland made a hobby of learning all he could of this accursed place. Better he had found entertainment elsewhere.”
The fire witch’s tone suggested that she had forgotten who initiated her lover into the rigors of the Red Dip. Saloona was too despondent to point this out.
“I could remain within the ship and await your return when the festivities are over,” she said as the prism ship hovered above a grassy hollow near a drive clotted with other conveyances. “That might expedite our safe return to my farmstead.”
“Our safe return is neither assured nor necessarily desirable,” the fire witch retorted. “Far nobler it is to bring down a despot’s throne! What cost thus are our petty lives, expended to further such a worthy enterprise?”
The ship grounded itself with a bump.
“What cost?” Saloona turned, furious. “I do not share your suicidal impulses, and my presence is certainly unnecessary for you to achieve them. Why did you engage me in this improvident venture?”
Paytim recoiled. She clutched the Black Peal, now disguised as a mottled nosegay, to her breast.
“Why not?” she replied. “You yourself admitted that you needed to get out more. Come, this seat is uncomfortable to the extreme, my leg is badly cramped.”
The ship’s petals expanded and the fire witch disembarked, hobbling. Saloona followed. The ship trembled beneath her footsteps, and she patted it.
“There, there, don’t fret, I will be back. Wait here. I won’t be late.”
The ship gave a final disconsolate shudder. Its violet plasma-field faded to a metallic gleam. Then the entire vessel retracted into the grass, evident only by a cloudy glister as of a circle of snail-slime.
“Leave your mercurial vessel,” commanded the fire witch. “We will have our choice of all these conveyances, if we survive.” She gestured at the waiting cabriolets and winged caravans, parked alongside the bridled destriers and sleeping gorgosaurs that lined the long curving drive.
Saloona cast a last, woeful look at her ship, then continued after Paytim.
Her heart felt leaden. She could no longer pretend that her decades-long emotional abeyance had not been undone, perhaps irrevocably, by a few days’ exposure to the rod that contained the Black Peal. For the first time in her life, she found herself recalling earlier, more clement times, experiences she had not realized were avatars of happiness. A green sward dappled with hundreds of tiny, milk-white umbrellas, first spore-rich fruits of warm summer rain; the song of thrushes and rosy-breasted hawfinches; a magenta cloud peeling from the surface of the dying sun and disintegrating into violet shreds, harbinger of Earth’s final days. All these things Saloona had glimpsed, and thousands more; yet never had she shared a single one with another person.
This is regret, a voice whispered inside her skull. This is what it means to have lived alone.
“Quickly now, Saloona Morn—we’re late as it is.” The fire witch grabbed Saloona’s arm. “Here—”
The fire witch thrust a packet into her hand, turned, and hastened toward an immense carven arch that opened onto a hallway larger than any manse Saloona had ever seen. Liveried janissaries leaned against the fortress walls, and several guests milled outside the entry. A bearded wench; an obese man with wattles like the dewlaps of a lichened sloth; glass-skinned gaeants from Thrill whose faces were swathed in a white haze that obscured their features while still suggesting an enigmatic beauty.
In dismay, Saloona examined her own attire—trousers hopelessly rumpled, the absurd curling-toed slippers soaked with dew; shapeless kimono drooping from her shoulders. Only the toxic necklace seemed remotely suitable for an enterance into the Crimson Messuage. She turned to stare resentfully at the fire witch.
Paytim shrugged. “You’re with me,” she said, and approached the gate.
Saloona clenched her fist, crushing the packet Paytim had given her. Its contents were not damaged, as she discerned when she opened it and found that it contained two yellowish blobs, the beeswax earplugs Paytim had provided against the Black Peal. In her fury, Saloona considered grinding them into the dirt, but was reluctant to further despoil her slippers.
“Your invitation?”
Saloona looked up to see the fire witch confronting a young man costumed as a harlequin.
Paytim raised her hand. “My invitation?”
One serpentine wristlet raised itself as if to strike, then opened its mouth. Out spat a glowing ruby bead that hung in the air as a ghostly, high-pitched voice began to recite.
Paytim Noringal, Incendiary and Recusant! You exile has been revoked, following the abrupt and unfortunate death of Her Majesty Paeolina the Twenty-Eighth. His Majesty Paeolina the Twenty-Ninth hereby requests your attendance at the after-ball following his coronation.
The fire witch dropped her hand. The serpent retracted, the apparition disappeared in a sparkle of gold flame.
The harlequin inclined his head. “Paytim Noringal. Forgive me.”
“My guest, Saloona Morn, a renowned Cobalt Mountain witch,” said Paytim, and brandished her false nosegay. “Now bid us enter.”
They walked down a narrow corridor carved from the soft red stone. Antic music beckoned them, and the scents of burning hyssop, sweet clistre, tangerine peel. A short distance away, within the atrium, Saloona glimpsed revelers in sumptuous dress, garlanded with salya-blossom and ropes of garnet. As they drew near the entry, the fire witch abruptly stopped and grasped Saloona’s arm.
“I find your garb increasingly inadequate for a celebration of this magnificence—I fear your presence will draw undue attention to the both of us and prevent the implementation of our implacable charm.”
Saloona nodded, and, with precipitate steps, turned to depart. “I could not agree more, I will await you outside.”
“There is no need of that. A simple cantrap will ensure your modishness. Shut your eyes lest a disarming glitter blind you.”
Saloona paused, disappointed, but agreed. Behind closed eyelids, she detected a subtle evocation of fireworks, then felt her clothes ruffled into slight disarray before arranging themselves into a pleasing texture.
“There,” said Paytim with satisfaction.
Saloona opened her eyes to find her inadequate garments replaced by folds of ice-colored silk and her hair enclosed by a stiff taffeta net in the shape of a chambered nautilus. Instead of the absurd tasseled slippers, her feet were shod in silver-toed mules trimmed with living gleamants—equally ridiculous, but far more modish. The toxic necklace, at last, seemed well-partnered with the rest of her wardrobe. Instinctively, her hand reached for her waist. She was reassured by the touch of her pharmacopoeia pouch, now disguised as an eeftskin reticule, and her fingers traced the familiar outline of the crystal vial within that contained the Ubiquitous Antidote.
“Come now,” said Paytim. “Perhaps the King himself will desire you as a partner in the gavot.”
Saloona paled at this suggestion, but her companion had already swept into the atrium. As Saloona followed, she was assailed by additional fragrant odors and a raunchier, underlying smell of sweat, along with strains of laughter and genial music. Overhead, a heaven’s-worth of lumieres shone in crepuscular eddies of violet and firefly green. Dancers engaged in the complex turns of Spur-Your-Master, or coupled recklessly in recessed alcoves where they were observed by crapulous onlookers sipping canisters of nettlefish liqueur and crimson lager.
“Is the King in evidence?” inquired Saloona.
Paytim gestured diffidently at a gilded platform. “He disports himself there, clad in the Punctilious Trousers that are his mark of office. As Earth has declined into senescence and valetudinarian decay, so too have the Paeolinas. Last of a debauched line: none will mourn his death.”
Saloona observed an urceolate figure who held a jeroboam of frothing liquor. Bedraggled yellow feathers clung to his distended torso. The remnants of a lacy filibeg clung to the twisted circlets of the Crimson crown, its garnets glinting dully, and the Punctilious Trousers bore unpleasant stains.
Still the King capered and shrieked with laughter. He staggered between equally bibulous guests who shoved him back and forth as though he were a dandle-ball.
“It is not an impressive sight,” Saloona concurred. “Yet surely not all of these assembled are without virtue, and deserving of destruction?”
“You think not? See there! Lalula Lindinii, as debased as she is lovely behind that wimple—she skewered her entire family as they slept, then fed their corpses to the grues. And there, milky-faced Wanfredo della Ruiz, who shares his bed with a gloth. And there, the conjoined twins Dil and Dorla Klaxen-Haw, whose erotic contortions involve mewling infants and a plasmatic whipsaw. There is not a one here whom Zandoggith the Just would not condemn to ceaseless torment, if She were among us now.”
“How then will we escape punishment?” asked Saloona. “You have yet to reveal your stratagem for our escape.”
“Fortunate indeed are we that Zandoggith is not in evidence.” The fire witch ran her fingers across the false bijoux at Saloona’s throat, glancing at the malign nosegay in her other hand. She then gave Saloona a crafty look, and pointed across the crowded room. “I believe you will find refreshment at that banquette. Fortify yourself with nettlefish froth, then sow your fungal confusions amongst this swaggering crowd. I will perform an appraisal of this space and its egress; after that, the Black Peal will ring, and you and I can manage a hasty departure.”
Before Saloona could protest, Paytim darted into the crowd and disappeared from sight. Saloona wasted several minutes searching for her in vain, before deciding to avail herself of the Paeolinas’ noted gastronomy.
This she found to be disappointing. The black-backed porpoise infused with essence of quince-apple and juniper was cloying, the matalusk-hooves insipid, and a locust blancmange grossly inferior to Paytim Noringal’s jelly.
Only the nettlefish froth exceeded her expectations, a pinkish liqueur of wonderful clarity and astringent flavor. Three glasses eased her anxiety to the extent that Saloona momentarily forgot the reason for her presence at the celebration: she wandered listlessly among the throng, enjoying glimpses of her own silk-clad form in the highly polished walls, and the occasional admiring glance she received from an inebriated courtier or dame.
It was after one such had made excessively libidinous suggestions to her that Saloona, aggrieved, unclasped the necklace, muttered an activating charm, and crushed the first of the toxic vesicles beneath his nostrils.
“A sumptuous odor,” the courtier leered. Immediately, he loosed a disarming squeal and fell onto his back, wriggling arms and legs agitatedly before expiring into a sudden, deep slumber.
Saloona regarded her handiwork, then began to make her way across the crowded atrium. Every few steps, she would remove another vesicle, invoke the appropriate incantation, and crush the gemlike receptable between her fingertips. She did not pause to look back until she had made a circuit of the room and deployed every fungal poison. Only then did she turn and, with a self-satisfied smile, note the startling perturbation in the crowd.
First one and then another merrymaker leapt into the air, thrashing and whirling as with St. Vitus Dance, and as quickly dropped to the floor, insensible. Others froze in place like costumed statuary. Still others began to laugh with rash hilarity, then, with maddened eyes, tore off their garments and raced through the atrium, crowing like cockerels and gargle-doves.
“Sweet Bentha’s hips, the King’s lunacy has contaged them!” a courtier exclaimed.
Saloona stood on tiptoe, and observed a tall figure racing toward the royal dais. The fire witch dashed onto the platform, flinging aside dancers and musicians and janissaries until she stood before the King, who screamed with laughter when he saw her.
“Here’s a cormorant to be caught by tickling!” he cried, and attempted to grasp her by the waist. “Long have I awaited your return to our jolly company! Come, dance with me, sweet sot!”
“Cymbolus Paeolina!”
The fire witch’s voice rang through the atrium. Gasps could be heard at the sound of the King’s given name, and a few improvident guffaws. But the King only swayed back and forth, laughter burbling from his flaccid lips as the fire witch raised her arm.
“Witness now the destruction of your witless lineage!” she cried. “Let bones and sinews be the harmonium upon which your last gavot is played!”
Dreadful light candled Paytim Noringal’s eyes. Her wristlets melted into strands of hissing gold; the basilisk comb bared its teeth. She lifted her hand, displaying a wand of glaring adamant, aflicker with abstruse numerals and unknown symbols. A fiery line traversed its length, and the rod split in two parts, each ablaze with clefs and breves and mediants, forking clews and fabrudans; every one an eidolon of some arcane note or tongue or hymn.
Saloona blinked, too stunned to flee or even move, as with a piercing cry the fire witch raised the wands above her head and struck one against the other. Silence, save for the ragged breathing of the King.
It is a fraud, thought Saloona, and from within the crowd heard similar sighs and expressions of relief.
Quickly, she turned to go, deeming this an expeditious time to return to her ship, when from somewhere high above sounded a single note of penetrating sweetness.
Saloona froze, enraptured. Such a note might Estragal have blown upon his yellow reed when he first played morning to the Earth, and roused dawn from deep within the dreaming sea. She began to weep, recalling a girlhood afternoon when she fell asleep among a field of coral fungus and fairy clubs, and woke to a sky painted with shooting stars.
Never had she heard such music! The lingering note suffused her with benevolence, a taste as of hydromel upon her tongue; and every face she saw reflected her own, mingling rapture and regret, desire and satiation; transport and pensive yearning.
All save Paytim Noringal’s. With acrobatic intensity, she dismounted from the dais, paused to imbibe the contents of a small vial, and fled toward the door.
Saloona frowned. Her rapture faded into a dim memory of something less pleasant, a more astringent flavor upon her tongue . . .
The Ubiquitous Antidote.
Frantically, she sought within the folds of her silken gown for the reticule containing her pharmacopoeia. Her fingers tore at its ribands, dug inside to retrieve the crystal vial. Saloona unstoppered it and brought it to her mouth.
Only a droplet touched her tongue. In disbelief, she tapped it against her lips, then inspected it more closely.
The vial had been emptied.
Perfidious fire witch!
Too late, Paytim’s betrayal grew plain: she had insisted that Saloona come along solely to make use of her prism ship and steal her share of the Antidote, doubling her own protection. At this moment, she would be stealing another conveyance outside, while her naive neighbor perished from Paytim’s treachery. Desperately, Saloona sucked at the crystal tube, attempting to absorb some particle of resistance before she succumbed to the Black Peal.
But even now a new and haunting tune replaced the melancholy note. Fairy horns and tambours, flutes and sonorous oblelloes joined a bolero that swelled and quickened then died away, only to resume in a frenzied, even brutal, cadence. Saloona stumbled toward the room’s perimeter, as around her dazed revelers batted fretfully at the air and stumbled past each other, like children playing Find Your Lady.
“Variana! Oh fair Variana, what betrayal is this?”
“Never shall I part from you, Capiloso, you have my heart.”
“Essik Longstar, oh my poor sweet child . . .”
The air rang with wrenching cries: all mistook the living for those long dead. The music dissolved, only to return, with renewed and clamorous vigor. Mothers lamented slain children; betrayed lovers gouged their own cheeks and breasts. Janissaries rent their livery and grappled, mistaking colleagues for adulterous sweethearts, and Saloona paused in her ill-timed departure.
She knew this wild lullaby—surely it had been sung to her in her cradle? She hesitated, and her feet began to pick out a series of complex steps upon the tiled floor.
Yet some speck of the Ubiquitous Antidote still moved within her. She kicked the unwieldy silver-toed mules from her feet and fought her way to the wall. There she paused for breath, and gazed about the atrium for sign of Paytim Noringal.
The fire witch had disappeared. On the royal dais, groping masquers surrounded the King, who stood with mouth agape as though to catch the cascading notes upon his tongue. Trills and subtle drumbeats, a twanging volley of zithers and bandores, sweet mandols and violones—all swelled to a deafening roar, as the savage rhapsody employed the bewitched guests as its orchestra.
The King’s gaping mouth unhinged. Strands of pliant flesh unfurled from his sallow face to form a crimson lyre. Ribs sprang from his chest like tines and commenced to play a mesmerizing glissando. With an echo of kettle-drums, his skull toppled from its gory spindle and cracked, and the garnet-studded Crimson Crown rolled across the tiles.
So it was that every guest in that company became an instrument upon which Blase’s notturno played—all save Saloona Morn. Sanguine piccolos shrilled, accompanied by lyres strung with sinew and hair, the clatter of skull castanets and sternum manichords tapped by fleshless fingers. An audience of one heard this macabre symphony, sustained by the power of even the small amount of the Ubiquitous Antidote she had been able to consume; though gladly would she have missed the performance.
The infernal symphony swelled to a crescendo. With each note, a fragment of the fortress toppled, a rain of crimson stone and painted tiles crashing around Saloona’s motionless form. Overwrought as she was, she could not move; only watch as the fortress was reduced to a vast ruin of cinnabar and garnet, slick with blood, where the gleam-ants fed. So ended the rancorous line of Paeolina, which had begun with a gavot.
