Sunfall, p.2
Sunfall, page 2
"Come back again," she said, "when you're reborn. We shall find pleasure in it."
"Ermine," he cried. "Ermine!"
But she left the bed and shrugged into her gown, called attendants and lingered there among the maids, laughter in her aged eyes. "In Onyx Palace, newborn lover, the likes of you are servants like these, even after several lifetimes. What decadences Jade tolerates to bring one up a prince! You have diverted me, put a crown on a memorable day. Now begone. I sense myself about to be bored." He was stunned. He sat a good long moment after she had left in the company of her maids, heart-wounded and with heat flaming in his face. But then, the reborn were accustomed to speak to him and to each other with the utmost arrogance. He thought it a testing, as his mother had tested him, as Pertito and Legran had called him hopelessly young, but not without affection He thought, sitting there, and thought, when he had dressed to leave and concluded that he had not utterly failed to amuse. It was novelty he lacked.
He might achieve this by some flamboyance, a fourth Jade death hastening into that next life but he would miss Onyx Ermine by the years that she would continue to live, and he would suffer through lifetimes before they were matched in age again.
He despaired. He dressed again and walked out to seek her in the halls, found her at last in the company of Onyx friends, and the room echoing with laughter. At him.
It died for a moment when she saw him standing there. She held out her hand to him with displeasure in her eyes, and he came to her, stood among them.
There was a soft titter from those around her. "You should have sent him to me," a woman older than the others whispered, and there was general laughter.
"For you there is no novelty," Ermine laughed. She lolled carelessly upon her chair and looked up at Alain. "Po go now, before you become still more distressed. Shall I introduce you to my last husband?" She stroked the arm of the young woman nearest her. "She was. But that was very long ago. And already you are dangerously predictable. I fear I shall be bored."
"Oh, how can we be?" the woman who had been her husband laughed. "We shall be entertained at Jade's expense for years. He's very determined. Just look at him. This is the sort of fellow who can make a pattern, isn't he? Dear Ermine, he'll plague us all before he's done, create some nasty scandal and we shall all be like Legran and Pertito and poor Claudette or whatever their names will be. We shall be sitting in this room cycle after cycle fending away this impertinent fellow."
"How distressing," someone yawned. The laughter rippled round again, and Ermine rose from her chair, took his burning face in her two hands and smiled at him. "I cannot even remember being the creature you are. There is no hope for you. Don't you know that I'm one of the oldest in Onyx? You've had your education. Begone."
"Four years," someone laughed. "She won't look at me after thirty lifetimes."
"Good-bye," she said.
"What might I do," he asked quietly, "to convince you of novelty and persuade you, in this life or the next?"
Then she did laugh, and thought a moment. "Die the death for love of me. No one has done that."
"And will you marry me before that? It's certain there's no bargain after."
There was a shocked murmur among her friends, and the flush drained from the cheeks of Onyx Ermine.
"He's quite mad," someone said.
"Oynx offered a wager," he said. "Jade would never say what it doesn't mean. Shall I tell this in Jade, and amuse my elders with the tale?"
"I shall give you four years," she said, "since you reckon that a very long time."
"You will marry me."
"You will die the death after that fourth year, and I shall not be bothered with you in the next life."
"No," he said. "You will not be bothered."
There was no more laughter. He had achieved novelty. The older woman clapped her hands solemnly, and the others joined the applause. Ermine inclined her head to them, and to him; he bowed to all of them in turn.
"Arrange it," she said.
It was a grand wedding, the more so because weddings were rare, on the banks of the Sin where alone in the City there was room enough to contain the crowd. Alain wore black with white stones; Ermine wore white with yellow gold. There was dancing and feasting and the dark waters of the Sin glistened with the lights of lanterns and sparkling fires, with jewel-lights and the glowing colors of the various palaces of the City.
And afterward there was long, slow lovemaking, while the celebrants outside the doors of Jade Palace drank themselves giddy and feted a thing no one had ever seen, so bizarre a bargain, with all honor to the pair which had contrived it.
In days following the wedding all the City filed into Jade to pay courtesy, and to see the wedded couple to applaud politely the innovation of the youngest and most tragic prince of the City. It was the more poignant because it was real tragedy. It eclipsed that of the Grand Cyclics. It was one of the marks of the age, an event unduplicatable, and no one wished to miss it.
Even the Death came, almost the last of the visitors, and that was an event which crowned all the outre affair, an arrival which struck dumb those who were in line to pay their respects and rewarded those who happened to be there that day with the most bizarre and terrible vision of all.
She had come far, up all the many turnings of the stairs from the nether depths of the City, where she kept her solitary lair near the tombs. She came robed and veiled in black, a spot of darkness in the line. At first no one realized the nature of this guest, but all at once the oldest did, and whispered to the others.
Onyx Ermine knew, being among the oldest, and rose from her throne in sudden horror. Alain stood and held Ermine's hand, with a sinking in his heart.
Their guest came closer, swathed in her robes she, rumor held it, had a right to Jade, who had been born herenot born at all, others said, but engendered of all the deaths the City never died. She drank souls and lives. She had prowled among them in the ancient past like a beast, taking the unwilling, appearing where she would in the shadows. But at last she established herself by the tombs below, for she found some who sought her, those miserable in their incarnations, those whose every life had become intolerable pain. She was the only death in the City from which there was no rebirth.
She was the one by whom the irreverent swore, lacking other terrors.
"Go away," the eldest of Jade said to her.
"But I have come to the wedding," the Death said. It was a woman's voice beneath the veils. "Am I not party to this? I was not consulted, but shall I not agree?"
"We have heard," said Onyx Ermine, who was of too many lifetimes to be set back for long, "we have heard that you are not selective."
"Ah," said the Death. "Not lately indeed; so few have come to me. But shall I not seal the bargain?"
There was silence, dread silence. And with a soft whispering of her robes the Death walked forward, held out her hands to Jade Alain, leaned forward for a kiss.
He bent, shut his eyes, for the veil was gauze, and he had no wish to see. It was hard enough to bear the eyes of the many-lived; he had no wish at all to gaze into hers, to see what rumor whispered he should find there, all the souls she had ever drunk. Her lips were warm through the gauze, touched lightly, and her hands on his were delicate and kind.
She walked away then. He felt Ermine's hand take his, cold and sweating. He settled again into the presence hall throne and Ermine took her seat beside him. There was awe on faces around them, but no applause.
"She has come out again," someone whispered. "And she hasn't done that in ages. But I remember the old days. She may hunt again. She's awake, and interested."
"It's Onyx's doing," another voice whispered. And in that coldness the last of the wedding guests drifted out. The doors of Jade Palace closed. "Bar them," the eldest said. It was for the first time in centuries. And Ermine's hand lay very cold in Alain's.
"Madam," he said, "are you satisfied?"
She gave no answer, nor spoke of it after.
There were seasons in the City. They were marked in anniversaries of the Palaces, in exquisite entertainments, in births and deaths.
The return of Claudette was one such event, when a year-old child with wise blue eyes announced his former name, and old friends came to toast the occasion.
The return of Legran and Pertito was another, for they were twin girls in Onyx, and this complication titillated the whole City with speculations which would take years to prove.
The presence of Jade Alain at each of these events was remarked with a poignancy which satisfied everyone with sensitivity, in the remarkable realization that Onyx Ermine, who hid in disgrace, would inevitably return to them, and this most exquisite of youths would not.
One of the greatest Cycles and one of the briefest lives existed in intimate connection. It promised change.
And as for the Death, she had no need to hunt, for the lesser souls, seeking to imitate fashion in this drama, flocked to her lair in unusual number some curious and some self-destructive, seeking their one great moment of passion and notoriety, when a thousand thousand years had failed to give them fame.
They failed of it, of course, for such demises were only following a fashion, not setting one; and they lacked inventiveness in their endings as in their lives.
It was for the fourth year the City waited.
And in its beginning:
"It is three-fourths gone," Onyx Ermine said. She had grown paler still in her shamed confinement within Jade Palace. In days before this anniversary of their wedding she had received old friends from Onyx, the first time in their wedded life she had received callers. He had remarked then a change in her lovemaking, that what had been pleasantly indifferent acquired passion. It was perhaps the rise in her spirits. There were other possibilities, involving a former lover. He was twenty-two and saw things more clearly than once he had.
"You will be losing something," he reminded her coldly, "beyond recall and without repetition. That should enliven your long life."
"Ah," she said, "don't speak of it. I repent the bargain. I don't want this horrid thing, I don't; I don't want you to die."
"It's late for that," he said.
"I love you."
That surprised him, brought a frown to his brow and almost a warmth to his heart, but he could muster only sadness. "You don't," he said. "You love the novelty I've brought. You have never loved a living being, not in all your lifetimes. You never could have loved. That is the nature of Onyx."
"No. You don't know. Please. Jade depresses me. Please let's go and spend the year in Onyx, among my friends. I must recover them, build back my old associations. I shall be all alone otherwise. If you care anything at all for my happiness, let's go home to Onyx."
"If you wish," he said, for it was the first time that she had shown him her heart, and he imagined that it might be very fearsome for one so long incarnate in one place to spend too much time apart from it. His own attachments were ephemeral. "Will it make you content?"
"I shall be very grateful," she said, and put her arms about his neck and kissed him tenderly.
They went that day, and Onyx received them, a restrained but festive occasion as befitted Ermine's public disfavor but she fairly glowed with life, as if all the shadows she had dreaded in Jade were gone. "Let us make love," she said, "oh now!" And they lay all afternoon in the saffron bed, a slow and pleasant time.
"You're happy," he said to her. "You're finally happy."
"I love you," she whispered in his ear as they dressed for dinner, she in her white and pearls and he in his black and his green jade. "Oh let us stay here and not think of other things."
"Or of year's end?" he asked, finding that thought incredibly difficult, this day, to bear.
"Hush," she said, and gave him white wine to drink. They drank together from opposite sides of one goblet, sat down on the bed and mingled wine and kisses. He felt strangely numb, lay back, with the first intimation of betrayal. He watched her cross the room, open the door. A tear slipped from his eye, but it was anger as much as pain.
"Take him away," Onyx Ermine whispered to her friends. "Oh take him quickly and end this. She will not care if he comes early."
"The risk we run "
"Would you have her come here? For three years I have lived in misery, seeing her in every shadow. I can't bear it longer. I can't bear touching what I'm going to lose. Take him there. Now."
He tried to speak. He could not. They wrapped him in the sheets and satin cover and carried him, a short distance at first, and then to the stairs, by many stages. He heard finally the thunder of the falls of the Sin, and the echoes of the lower levels heard the murmur of spectators near him at times, and knew that none but Jade might have interfered. They were all merely spectators. That was all they wished to be, to avoid complications.
Even, perhaps, Jade itself observed. They laid him down at last in a place where feet scuffed dryly on dust, and fled, and left silence and dark. He lay long still, until a tingling in his fingers turned to pain, which traveled all his limbs and left him able again to move. He stirred, and staggered to his feet, cold in a bitter wind, chilled by the lonely dark. From before him came the dim light of lamps, and a shadow sat between them.
"You are betrayed," the Death said.
He wrapped his arms about him against the chill and stared at her.
"She doesn't love you," said the Death. "Don't you know that?"
"I knew," he said. "But then, no one ever did. They've forgotten how."
The Death lifted her hands to the veils and let them fall. She was beautiful, pale of skin, with ebon hair and a blood-red stain of rubies at her brow. She held out hands to him, rising. And when she came to him he did not look away. "Some change their minds," she said. "Even those who come of their own will."
The eyes were strange, constantly shifting in subtle tones the fires, perhaps, or all the souls she had drunk, all the torment. "I bring peace," she said. "If I did not exist, there would be no way out. And they would all go mad. I am their choice. I am possibility. I am change in the cycles."
He gazed into the flickerings, the all-too-tenanted eyes. "How is it done?" he asked, fearing to know.
She embraced him, and laid her head at his shoulder. He flinched from a tiny sharp pain at his throat, quickly done. A chill grew in his limbs, a slight giddiness like love.
"Go back," she said releasing him. "Run away until your time."
He stumbled back, found the door, realized belatedly her words.
"Go," she said. "I'll come for you in my agreed time. I at least keep my word, Jade Alain."
And when he would have gone
"Jade Alain," she said. "I know you have moved to Onyx. I know most things in the City. Tell your wife I keep my promises."
"She fears you."
"She is nothing," the Death said. "Do you fear me?"
He considered. The question found him numb. And for all his numbness he walked back to her, faced the dreadful eyes. He tested his courage by it. He tested it further, took the Death's face between his hands and returned the kiss she had given three years before.
"Ah," she said. "That was kind."
"You are gentle," he said. "I shall not mind."
"Sad Jade prince. Go. Go away just now."
He turned away, walked out the grim doorway into the light, walked up the stairs, a long, long walk, in which there were few passersby, for it was what passed for night in the City now, and of that he was very glad, because of the shame which Onyx had dealt him and the anger he felt. Those who did see him stared, and muttered behind their hands and shrank away. So did those at the doors of Onyx, who blanched and began to bar his way.
But the doors opened, and Ermine's several friends stood with knives.
"Go away," they said.
"That was not the bargain," he replied.
"Your wife is the bargain," the oldest woman said. "Take Ermine back to Jade. Don't involve us."
"No," Ermine wailed from the hall beyond; but they brought her to him, and he took her by the hand and dragged her along to his own doors. She ceased struggling. They entered within the ornate halls of Jade Palace, and under the fearful eyes of his own kin, he drew her through the maze of corridors to his own apartments, and sealed the door fast behind them.
She was there. There was no possible means that she could be but there the Death stood, clothed in black, among the green draperies by the bed. Ermine flung about and cried aloud, stopped by his opposing arms.
