Authors: Tanith Lee

White As Snow (Fairy Tale) (19 page)

BOOK: White As Snow (Fairy Tale)

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H
IS SHADOW STRODE BEFORE the torch ahead of him, into the shack-house.

It was a tall, broad shadow, that of a man over six feet, and heavy boned, and cloaked in hair.

Coira, though she knew it for a shadow, started up.

The two dwarvixens, Want, Vinka, were away as usual. Coira was all alone, and alone.

He walked in. He moved in a limping strut, full of bravura, and from that by itself she would have known who it was. But she only stared at him.

Stormy looked at her, and looked aside.

“Don’t get frightened, but Someone came for me in the workings. We must go and visit their prince, here.”

“
We
—”

“I, because I do the talking. And you, mistress. Since you own us. It’s because of the mirror lid, the smelting. Soporo swore no one would tell, but someone has. This prince will want to know where we got the silver from. And he’ll expect a share of it. So, he shall have it. It’s not so bad as it sounds. All will be well. But we have to go.”

She had heard, here and there in Elusion, conjecture that perhaps Hell’s prince was a bastard of King Draco’s (and so another half brother of her own.) Others said he was a bandit from across the River Chlav, under sentence of the gallows in the city.

This prince had less importance for Coira even than Tusaj. Who had ever been important? One. And now—now this one, limpingly striding at her side, the crown of his dark head just above her elbow.

Once she stumbled. The track was shale and stones and unidentifiable broken stuffs. Not halting his swagger-stagger gait, he
reached out and steadied her. He was strong as a horse.
Stronger
than Cirpoz’s two ill-kept horses.

She wished she were not with him, and that they did not have to make this further journey together. Yet her blood leapt about. She felt alive and angry—angry as his name.

“Before you came in, I was thinking,” she said. “I might as well leave you. But I suppose you won’t let me. You say you need me to pretend I’m your mistress.”

“How could we prevent you?” Stormy remarked flatly.

“There are seven of you. One of me. You all hate me, of course,” she heard herself say, with astonishment.

He said nothing.

She added, and again the bitter grievance in her voice amazed her, “I have nowhere else to go, in any case.”

“You miss the sunlight,” he said.

“Do I? No. What does the sun matter? I don’t miss anything. All this, all that—what does any of it mean to me?”

Shocked and dislocated, she had been—in a trance. It seemed they ran in her family. It had lasted two or three months. Above, the winter had filled the world. Down here, only cold night filled it. She was waking now. Had the stumble woken her, unlocking the choking hold on her heart? His hand had caught her arm, steadying, and rocking her like a tempest. The hand had woken her, not the stumble. Yet she had put her own hands on
him
already, in the disgusting black bath.

Two things happened to Coira. Her blood, her loins, burst into flame, melting like the silver from the mirror. And utter despair froze her, harder than an icicle.

If he guessed any of it, he did not reveal. But he did glance at her, and then away. He was scowling and his mouth had set in a grimace, as when he acted his part as the Sin of Rage.

Below the slopes were more areas of ramshackle lit-up nighttown. They wove through cots built of posts, and tents of rotted leather, and under the stinking holes of caves. Then they were down in a type of trough, and walked under the columned galleries
of the cliffs, where, even so, the inescapable marble dust floated down and round in drifts. Soon they passed a subground entry to the quarries, deadly pale against the firelit dark. Some pale creatures sat there, dicing, like damned figures from a warning priestly book.

“There’s the boat,” said Stormy.

In panic, she thought he meant the boat to return her, via the River of Hate, to the upper world, and she exclaimed
“No!”
But her voice, once more amazing her, was inaudible.

It was not the ferryboat, but a kind of raft, and she saw they had reached the stream called Woe, which was quite wide.

“Payment,” said the old man who poled the raft.

“Forgo that,” said Stormy. “Hadz summoned us.”

“Oh, our Prince Hadz. Get on, then.”

Coira said, foolishly, “Is he really named Hadz—like the god of the dead?”

“Yes,” said Stormy.

They stood on the raft, which dipped and squeaked. The dark waters of the stream eddied about them, looking unnegotiable, and giddy and crazy as life itself.

But the gray old man determinedly poled them along, his back to them.

“What is your name?” Coira said to the dwarf.

His raging face did not alter.

“Mistress knows my name.”

“Stop calling me
mistress.
I won’t have it. Stop. Tell me your name.”

“Stormy. I play Anger.”

“No. Your
name.
Don’t you have a name?”

“It’s mine.”

“Oh, keep it, then.”

He grinned, but not glancing at her. “Are you having a turn, like Vinka?”

“Yes. But she has them when her courses are due or come on. They’re very irregular and that makes her worse.”

“Women’s mysteries.” He was humble, not coarse.

“I saw Hadz once. I mean, the god-king of death. When I was
a child. I thought it was a dream … but now I think they took me there, into the wood. And I saw him.”

“You’re a witch. I thought you were.”

“My mother was a witch. The witch-queen.”

The stream was very wide now. The shore was visible on either side, but it was far off, and looked unreachable, and the lights smoked along it garishly, or there were
no
lights, and blackness yawned. As for the raft, it was flimsy. The old man was a phantom. And they were all in Hell.

Stormy said to her, “I heard—she was a cruel woman, your mother, that queen.”

“She hated me. They always hate me.”

“They hate dwarves too. Anything different.”

“I have no reason to be alive,” she said, without any passion or complaint. Yet her blood swirled and coiled and glittered like the frightful Stream of Woe.

“I had a mother,” said Stormy softly. He looked out, as she did, past the old man into the dark, where they were going. “No father, mind you. She gave me a shiny name. Then she saw what I was going to be, so she threw me off a hill.”

Coira heard herself make a sound. Both of them ignored it.

“That’s how my ankles were shattered. I was about two. Someone found me. The ankles mended wrongly, but they mended. Then I was put into the mines. Don’t think I dislike mines. They’re my home. I know where I am, there.”

Coira said, “I must sit down. I’ll fall off into the water.” She sat down. Seated, he towered above her, but still he did not turn. She said, “It must hurt you so much—your ankle bones.”

He said, “My mother called me, before she threw me off the hill, Hephaestion.”

Coira put her head on her knees and cried.

The old man poled for their hidden destination.

After the raft grounded, they got off and went across the valley. He noted the skirt of her silk gown was soaking, as if she had wet
herself or been monumentally fucked. But, poor thing, it was her tears.

The Christ knew what he felt.

No, he knew. But he put that aside.

It was almost the way he had felt for Vinka, once, before he
knew)
Vinka, and how she was or would never be. Almost, but not the same. For Vinka was one of his own race. And this giantess, so slender he could snap her in two, she was from the other breed of cattle called Mankind.

The valley was strange but Stormy—Hephaestion—did not notice it particularly. He did note the paved road which had been made there and which they presently got onto. The stones were uneven; it was probably less helpful than the shale and litter.

Ahead lay the mansion. A conglomeration of shacks and huts that joined themselves to caves in the cliff behind, at the valley’s back. It was like all the other dwellings of Elusion, save for being linked together. And there was a facade. A line of pillars had somehow been fashioned. Tree trunks, they seemed to be. There were nine of them, each one three times a man’s height, and they held up the lopsided edges of the shack roofs.

A living tree grew by the mansion—at least, perhaps it was still alive. The marble dust had coated it thinly, its curving boughs and lifted, fossilized traceries. A poplar. It was whiter than snow.

The pool lay behind it, the one called Lethe, or Forgetting. The water was said to be outright fatal, worse than the stream, but some figures were there, drawing it up in buckets and jars.

Hell’s prince had his own guard. One of these villains now came ambling over, bristling with knives and studs.

“What do you want?”

“I’m the dwarf Stormy, and this is my mistress. He sent for us.”

“Well, if he did and you don’t go to him, it will be a nasty thing for you. But he might not want you now. He’s sick today,” added the guard. Oddly, he marked himself with the cross. “That thing where he screams.”

“I’ve heard of that.” Stormy handed the guard a little pouch
which held gold dust. “I found this on the way. Yours, I expect.”

The guard took the pouch, examined it, and let them into Hell’s mansion.

This was like life, too. You must even pay to be abused, as you were punished for being hurt.

But Coira did not care.

After her tears she felt cleansed and frivolous. She looked about her at the muddled interior. Lightless cells opened one into another, passages narrow as pins squeezed between. Everywhere sacking curtains hung down, but there were also curtains of sequined velvet. The braziers and fire-pits caused smoke, as elsewhere, and people came and went on slavish missions.

They were taken to an overseer or steward in one of the small rooms. By then, they had heard howls ringing through the mansion. Not some victim under torture, apparently, but Prince Hadz.

She said boldly to Hephaestion, “Why is he sick?”

“Some pain that comes in his head. He’s always had it, so I’ve heard.”

“It must he very bad,” she said, careless.

Then the steward bulked in, a fat ruffian with earrings of gold.

He looked straight at Coira. “Been shedding rears? Why are you crying? Afraid we’ve found you out?”

Stormy said at once, “Mistress’s father was killed above ground. She’s always crying over that.”

“What killed him?”

“Wolves,” said Coira clearly. “They ate him alive.”

The steward grunted and turned away.

“You’ve cheated on your tithes to the prince. You have silver, a lot of it, and never gave him his dues.”

Another cry tore round the mansion. As if the dwarves had caused Prince Hadz’s agony by their defiant act.

“How long does his pain last?” asked Coira politely.

“That yelling? A day, sometimes two. But to return to your crime.”

Stormy spoke. “No crime, master. The silver was the property
of mistress. Her father gave it to her. So we melted it down. And I have the prince’s portion here with me.”

Coira’s mind wandered from this. Yet it did not let go of him, of Hephaestion. Even looking up at the ceiling of the chamber, where black rags drooped like sleeping bats, Hephaestion was there.
His hair is like black bats. No, it curls too much for that. Like coils of copper turned black. Black grapes.
She smiled at her silly thoughts, and the overseer-steward again picked on her.

“What do you laugh at, you woman?”

Coira glanced at him. He did not matter, as nothing did, so she said, “There’s a herb that could assist Prince Hadz. Febrifuga.”

“Ah?” said the overseer. He was interested now in the silver ingots. “There’s more?”

Stormy: “No, master. It was only from a hand glass.”

“Someone told it was as big as you are.”

Stormy chuckled. “Someone dreamed.”

Coira watched the firelight dance here and there. And in black eyes that were only stones, shadows.

She heard the overseer say, “He found out you do an act of the Great Sins.”

“Sometimes, master.”

“He might like to see that, some other day.”

A heart-splintering cry rushed over now, beating with its wings to get free.

BOOK: White As Snow (Fairy Tale)