Authors: Elizabeth Hand
I blinked, wondering where Franca was. Then:
“Yaah!” A figure darted from the shadows and grabbed me by the shoulders. I swore and backed away to see Franca laughing breathlessly. “Scared you—”
Grabbing her wrist, I pulled her toward me, until she writhed giggling against my chest. She tried to pull away. I tightened my grip.
“Oww—stop, Raphael, it was
a joke!”
I did not let her go. For a moment I breathed in the scent of her hair, tangled with dust and smelling of harsh soap and sweat. That and the warmth of her beside me in the sudden sunlight made me dizzy. Abruptly I released her.
“Very funny.” I straightened my tunic. “Are these your Egyptians?”
She nodded, trying to catch her breath. “Ye-es,” she gasped, and bit her lip. She smoothed out her tunic, like a child running late into first worship. At the sight of me staring she quickly looked away. “Those are the Egyptians.”
I turned to see the Hall of the Dead Kings.
T
HERE WERE SCORES OF
them, the ancient men, in rows stretching on into the far dark corners of the echoing gallery. Even Franca was silenced by the place. “You’ve been here before?” I whispered. She did not reply, only nodded as she paced from one catafalque to another. I followed her, still blinking a little at the brilliant light that streamed from the arched glass vault overhead. The floor beneath us was black marble, and shot back a pantherish light at the ceiling’s spangled glass. The coffins themselves glowed golden and azure and scarlet, their patina of dust giving them a sheen as though draped in velvet. Throughout the vast room were raised huge statues, like sentinels guarding their sleeping lords, and great blocks of sand-colored stone etched with flat figures of animals and men. A heaviness in my chest made me realize I was holding my breath. I inhaled, and smelled sandalwood and rotting cloth.
How many aeons had they waited before coming here to sleep in silent rows beneath glittering columns of dust and sun? The very air was heated with their dreams. Before the first catafalque I stopped, placed my palm upon the smooth wooden plane of its face, feeling the dust of centuries seep into my pores so that when I turned my hand upward I half-expected to see imprinted there its enigmatic smile and onyx eyes. But there was nothing: only faint gray whorls and feathers of dirt, and a beetle’s shattered wing carapace. I recalled a phrase from one of Roland’s books, referring to the disinterment of the first archosaurs: “The riddle of the painful earth …”
I left the first effigy. Behind it, ranks of mummy cases and catafalques seemed to march endlessly. Only the uneven seams where the silvered glass had shifted gave the lie to this vision of infinity, and showed me where a vast mirror covered the far wall of the chamber. Franca drifted down the aisles, her reflection a white shadow slipping between the stone faces.
As if in a dream I wandered from one coffin to the next. Kings, queens, regents; royal embalmers and charioteers. Glass cases held the desiccated corpses of cats, their shriveled limbs bound with twine and stained brown cloth. Ibises wrapped until they resembled misshapen cruets were stacked in hollowed stone vessels. And everywhere those blank fixed eyes, gazing from catafalques and funerary urns, torques and golden breastplates and the gilded skulls of jackals.
“Who were they?” I asked, and started when Franca answered me from only a few feet away.
“They were the first ones here,” she said softly. “The Pilgrims. They came over the ocean in airships, fleeing the Old World where they were persecuted. They built the great monuments in the City in memory of their homeland. The Sorrowful Lincoln, the Obelisk, the Library of Conquest.”
I frowned. “Are you sure?” I asked, absently scraping a brittle label from a glass case. “I thought they were built by someone else, by Ascendants …”
She shook her head firmly. “No. After the Thirty Wars in the East, the Egyptians came to the City; after their desert was bombed. They all died here in the Long Night, during the Contagions. That’s why they’re in the Museum—”
I snatched my hand from the glass. “They all died from the Contagion?”
“No. They killed themselves rather than submit to the Ascendants. And their priests hid them in these boxes and brought them to the original Curators. Before we came, before the Second Ascension. We have protected them ever since.” She smiled at me, a child seeking approval for a lesson well learned.
“Then why is no one allowed here?” I traced a golden tear upon a wooden case. “If you’re protecting them, why are there no guards?”
She shrugged. “Why are there no guards for your precious Magdalene?” I paused and bit my lip. “Because no one would harm the Magdalene,” I said at last.
Franca leaned on a stone mummy case, chin resting on her hands. “Not even the gaping ones?” she said slyly.
I sniffed and made a face. “The Gaping One,” I corrected her. “I thought you knew nothing about us?” I flicked at her cheek and she grinned.
“I saw it in a play last winter. At Saint-Alaban. About a boy and a girl, twins—”
“Huh. Saint-Alabans: the Masque of Baal and Anat.”
“That’s right!” She brightened and waited expectantly. “Do you know it?”
I shook my head. “Superstitious nonsense, taught them by the Historians. You Curators think we’re such children! Only the Saint-Alabans believe in any of that, really. Most of us just do those things out of—out of habit, I suppose,” I ended. “The way you keep these damn galleries open and the cases clean and the exhibits in order. For who!”
Franca shrugged, then burst out laughing. “For the Egyptians! We’re waiting for the Egyptians!” And giggling she ran down the aisle; pausing to make a clumsy curtsey to the great cracked mirror.
I
WATCHED HER, GRINNING
. I seldom saw any of the Curators laugh among themselves, although we Paphians shared our own delight at the world’s foolishness as well as our joy in the flesh with our sober Patrons. Laughter did not make Franca any less ugly; but the sight and sound of it were rare enough to arouse me.
“Aren’t you afraid you’ll wake them?” I asked, slipping down the aisle to stand behind her.
“Not me!” She swung around to face me, bumping against a heavy pedestal. I caught her elbow as she steadied herself.
“Is it true what they say?” she demanded. I let my hand rest on her elbow and, when she did not pull away, stroked her arm.
“What’s that?” I asked softly.
She tilted her head. For an instant the sunlight made a bright halo of her tousled hair. “That you’ve had a thousand lovers.”
“At least.” I let my fingers drift to the small of her back. She stared at me suspiciously. When I did not smile she nodded.
“They said your master wanted you to be the next ruler of your House.” I shrugged modestly. “Why would you come here, where you’ll never be welcome?”
I looked up, surprised at her bluntness. “I did not know I would
never
be welcome,” I said bitterly. “I—I had hoped to learn great things here, and someday share my knowledge with my people …”
She shook her head. “But we would never share our secrets with a whore,” she said. There was no malice in her voice. “You have nothing to give us in return.”
“Nothing?” I drew her close to me. “Your people take everything we value—our youth and our beauty and our love—and disdain it!” She grew pale and tried to draw away from me, but I took her chin in my hand and twisted her face toward me to kiss her. Her lips were chapped, her mouth tasting of that morning’s apples and oatmeal. When I released her she did not move away. “What’s all your learning worth to a girl who’s never kissed a man?” I said more gently, and reached to take her hands.
Flushing, she tossed her head, looked away only to meet her face in the mirror and quickly turned back to me. “I—well, now I have,” she said, staring at her feet.
“Not really,” I murmured, and this time she moved against me and her hands roamed awkwardly down my back.
I slipped off her tunic and found a sweet young boy’s body beneath, long-legged and starred with moles, only with small round breasts and the slightest swell of hips and stomach. I went slowly, so as not to frighten her. I kissed her and was surprised at her innocent response, surprised and excited, too. Occasionally I glanced aside at our reflections, watching her unravel my braid so that my hair fell about us in auburn waves. And my own response excited me, that I could be so aroused by a Curator …
I held her more tightly, started to remove my trousers. She tried to pull away then. “No—what are you doing?” she said.
“Just wait,” I urged her, and tried to pull her to the floor. She pushed at me, then struggled to get away. “No, Raphael—stop, I’m afraid here—”
“What?” I shook my head in disbelief. Then I remembered Iris Bergenia, playing at fighting me in our chamber. I grabbed Franca’s hair and yanked her to the floor beside me. “I’ll teach you what you need to know about the Paphians,” I whispered, holding her beneath me.
“No!”
She kicked at me and I fell back, then turned and grabbed her before she could run away. Panting, I held her, furious and scarcely able to keep hold of her, I was trembling so from excitement and rage. She stared at me wild-eyed, not angry but terrified. I desired her more than I had ever wanted anyone.
“Now,” I whispered. As I pulled her face to mine she kicked at me again. Without thinking I struck her, saw a flash of violet at her neck. She shuddered, and I was stung by sudden remorse. Her mouth opened.
“Raphael,” she said thickly. As I stared her eyes widened. The pupils bloated suddenly, then contracted to specks like poppyseeds.
“Franca,” I said, alarmed. Her head lolled onto her shoulder. As I started to draw my hand back I felt a small tug at my wrist. I glanced down.
Against the taut skin of her neck my sagittal clung like a leech. I yanked my hand away and raised my fist, incredulous. For an instant I glimpsed the ebony spine retracting, felt the tiny shift of weight as the propodium curled back into its shell. I dropped my arm.
“Franca,” I repeated, raising my voice. “Franca. Wake up.”
Her mouth tightened. Saliva pearled on her lower lip and began to trace a silvery snail’s path down her chin. Where the sagittal had clung a small purplish star radiated upon her flesh as capillaries burst and feathers of blood unfurled beneath the skin. From a vein that only moments before had pulsed visibly a violet thread unraveled, a corrosive needle’s flourish to her heart. Heedless of whatever poison raced through her, I rested my cheek against her lips.
She was dead. As if dreaming, I let her corpse slip back to the floor and knelt beside it. “Franca,” I whispered over and over, staring wildly about the vast gallery, the silent figures and glowing catafalques now washed in amber light. “Franca …”
In the next few minutes her entire body began to flower with faint mauve petals. From neck to chest the tracery crept, her breasts blushing as from unseen kisses, her hands turning dusky blue as blood pooled in her fingertips. Rosy blossoms stained her thighs as though raining from the vault above us. Through my mind raced a song, nonsense we sang as children, the lazars’ song:
Bain the rain of roses
peonies and posies
Ashes, ashes
Now fall down …
Already the skull shone beneath her skin. I crooned her name, thinking
How beautiful she is now,
thinking how angry she would have been at this final betrayal of her flesh to loveliness, the septic garden that bloomed about her bones. Then I ravished her.
Quickly, because already her flesh stiffened about me, and her breasts tasted cold and faintly sweet. As my groans subsided I let her slip from my arms. Her head thudded against the floor. I staggered backward, wondering too late if the poison had now entered me as well. I grabbed a pedestal behind me and clung to it, weeping, embracing the cold stone until I could steady myself and turn to her again.
The canker had burst in her eyes. To my numb face she now returned a pansied stare. I kicked her tunic over her. face and stumbled to my feet, choking, even as I knew that I wanted her again, felt my heart tumbling at the sight of that stark white figure lying among all those calm and golden sleepers. But I forced myself to look away, to cast my gaze instead upon the wild figure that stared back from the ancient mirror: auburn hair disheveled, my face blotched with tears and dust. I almost laughed to see myself thus: the pride of the House Miramar weeping above the corpse of a scullion!
And then, echoing from the distant Main Hall came the praying notes of the call to the first dinner shift. Franca and I were on the third shift; but soon they would be missing us at supper. I turned back to her poor corpse, as if it might rise and give me solace. I bumped against a small catafalque atop a broken marble pillar, jarring its lid so that I had to catch it before it fell. And so jarred my own mind to wakefulness.
A full-size sarcophagus stood upright next to the broken column. I prized it open a crack, enough to glimpse inside the bound figure of its ancient king. I shoved the lid back and hurried to another. Its lid was sealed fast, as was the next one, and the next. But there were hundreds of cases here, and surely some of them had been robbed or disturbed over the aeons …
In a dark alcove I found it. No doubt it had once held the remains of some princeling: the lid showed a gilded face surmounted with enormous lapis eyes and a strangely calm mouth, slightly pursed as if dreaming fair dreams. Tentatively I rapped upon the lid. It returned a faint hollow sound. In a moment I had flung it open, to find only the yellow dust of its decayed wrappings and the curled remains of antlions and silverfish.
All about the inside of the sarcophagus were inscribed odd characters. I hesitated, gripped by a sudden cold fear of the coffin itself. But then I thought of how she loved birds, and here were painted birds to fly a soul to peace surely: eagles and gyrfalcons and ibises, kites and watchful owls. I blew the dust from the case, then stood to get Francesca.