Grail of the Summer Stars (Aetherial Tales) (16 page)

Mist made his excuses, and fled.

He sighed. He was lonely, but not desperate. Such encounters would have been sordid, worse than being alone.

Thinking back to Cairndonan, he remembered Gill, the young woman who’d helped Adam survive at his lowest ebb. Mist remembered her with deep fondness, but with no desire to seek her out. She had been Adam’s lover, not his. There was a difference. Although he contained Adam’s memories, becoming his Felynx self again had made Mist a changed individual. That aside, Gill and Adam had both acknowledged their encounter as sweet, healing, but short-lived.

Before Gill … there had been Rufus’s wild mob of followers, who had pleasured themselves upon a confused, drugged, half-mad Adam until their attentions had become more torture than pleasure.

He shut his eyes, pushing those memories away.

Stevie was different. Was she Aetherial? It was hard to tell, because she seemed unaware of her own Aetheric radiance and apparently hadn’t noticed it in Mist, either. It was bad manners among Vaethyr, if you weren’t sure, to ask outright. He couldn’t say, “Are you Vaethyr?” any more than one mortal would ask another, “Are you human, or some other bipedal species?” You were supposed to
know
.

For now, Stevie was an alluring mystery.

If ever she showed a glimmer of interest in return, it would be all too easy for him to fall for her. And if ever Rufus found out—
when
he found out, as he was bound to eventually—he would find a way to destroy her, as he had Helena. Just for the sheer mischief of it.

Helena
. Mist shuddered. He couldn’t place Stevie in such danger. Couldn’t let it happen, ever again.

“Mist … Mistangamesh…”

He started awake, unaware that he’d fallen asleep. For a moment he thought there was someone in the room. No; the voice was calling him from a dream.

The subconscious vision shocked him. It was a dream he’d often had before—but the last time was several hundred years ago. His sister Aurata was standing in the midpoint of a whirling black-and-white spiral, in a strange watery-blue space like a flooded mansion. Her head was thrown back and she was simply calling and calling … and every time, as now, he’d woken to the painful knowledge that even if her soul-essence still existed somewhere, he had no way to reach her.

*   *   *

Stevie liked the end of the day, when everyone had gone home and she could make her final checks in peace. Factory secure. Till empty, and money locked in the overnight safe. Shelves fully stocked in both gift shop and café; floors clean, all lights and equipment switched off. All that remained was to arm the alarm, lock up after herself and walk the short distance to her apartment.

She paused to look at the triptych. In near-darkness Daniel’s images looked unnaturally bright. She could almost see them not as paintings, but as windows.

She reached out, her fingertips hovering over the image of the flame-haired woman. If she reached any farther, surely her hand would pass through thin air and touch flesh. The idea gave her a shiver, thrilling but not altogether pleasant.

Why was Adam Leith so eager to buy the triptych? His evasiveness was infuriating. Daniel had claimed to have a buyer for all his work.
All
of it? Incredible, but … could Adam be the mysterious buyer?

Judging by the oddly impulsive way he’d made an offer, she doubted that he’d ever bought a painting in his whole life. Yet she could be wrong. Perhaps he had some kind of mental disorder.

With a jolt she remembered that, upstairs, the contents of the trash bags she’d taken from Daniel’s digs lay in a sad pile on her bed, awaiting her attention. There was nothing unpleasant, just old clothes and a handful of store receipts. She would fold everything neatly and then—winter weather and Fin’s willingness to lend her car permitting—take the stuff to Frances Manifold.

One last thing. She went to her workbench and switched on the lathe to check that Alec had made a proper job of replacing the motor. It seemed okay. She tidied the mess he’d left, putting her tools in their proper holders while resisting the temptation to sit down and reassemble the clock he’d been working on for weeks. She saw where every spindle and cog should nest, as naturally as a savant might recall facts and figures, so to leave it there unfinished was incredibly frustrating. Still, there was room for only one clock-repair genius, and if she completed his project for him, Alec would sulk for days.

The lathe was loud in the silence. She flicked it off and stood listening to the noises that the museum made at night. Pops and creaks and groans. Modernization was only a skin of plasterboard and paint; beneath, the old fabric of the building shifted, contracting as the night grew colder. Stevie wasn’t the only one to have seen the ghostly forms of Mr. Salter or Mr. Soames treading the corridors.

“Anyone there?” she called out.

She listened for a response. Once or twice, visitors had almost been locked in, either because they were in the restroom, or nosing where they shouldn’t be. No answer. Stevie had already checked. She refused to give in to her OCD tendencies and check again. She shook the bunch of keys in her hand, selecting the one she would need to lock the back door.

Something seized her from behind.

Powerful arms went round her, a hand groping to cover her mouth. It smelled bad, like iron or blood. By reflex she began to struggle with frenzied strength. She felt the flesh of her attacker’s hand against her lips and she bit down. He gave a growl of shocked pain.

Stevie broke loose. Then a weight cracked onto her skull, and she hit the floor in a storm of black stars.

7

Avenue of Beautiful Secrets

That evening, Rufus and Aurata took a slow walk along the Viale dei Belli Segreti. Arm in arm, he let her lead him wherever she wished. He looked up at pastel facades, saw shadowy figures gazing down at him from the high windows … felt a chill running up his back.

“Cold?” said Aurata.

“This is an elemental place, isn’t it? Somewhere for Aetherials to come and hide, when they’re tired of full-on life. These houses … they’re all full of specters. How can you live here? It’s giving me the creeps.”

Aurata grinned broadly. She kept her voice low as if they were passing through a graveyard. “Well spotted, sweetie. Yes, not all of us want to return to the Spiral or haunt a tree for five hundred years. They’re mostly Venetian Vaethyr who prefer to haunt the place they love until they’re ready for rebirth. And no, I didn’t create this street myself. An old lover of mine brought me here, and when he faded into elemental form he gave me his house, Estel bless him. I like it here. Not that I’m a hermit; I’m usually working and traveling. But it’s been a perfect retreat.”

“A safe place for ancient artifacts?”

“Quite. The neighbors don’t bother me and there is no crime.”

Rufus nodded, sharing her amusement. “If only I’d known you were here! We might have met years ago. Mist, too.”

She sighed. “As I said, I called, but only a few heard me. Veropardus, Slahvin—his assistant, when he was guardian of the Felixatus—and a few others who are not old Felynx but a new generation of Naamon blood who clearly feel drawn to me. They’re my dear chosen ones. And now you’re here, too.”

“This old lover,” said Rufus, “should I be jealous?”

Her laugh echoed off the sepulchral walls. “What for? You and I both worked our way through many willing companions, Felynx and Tashralyr, human and who knows what else. This particular man…” Her face went still, her eyes distant. “When I first woke and recalled the end of Azantios, I was deranged. I couldn’t stop thinking about the power we conjured in the chamber, and the way the earth trembled and the fire blazed. When I heard of Mount Vesuvius erupting and burying Pompeii, I traveled there. That was where I met Diodorus, an Aetherial who took the guise of a mature and handsome Roman citizen with silver hair … He was the most wonderful, intelligent companion I’ve ever known. I became obsessed by volcanoes—and do you realize how many times Vesuvius has erupted? It’s utterly awe-inspiring.” Her eyes shone. “For several hundred years, Diodorus traveled with me all around the Campanian volcanic arc—that part of southern Italy, where the Eurasian and African plates meet, is the most thrillingly active area—and he had the patience to indulge my obsession until I regained something resembling sanity.”

“So you think it’s sane, to clamber around boiling lava fields?” Rufus shook his head. “You really are odder than I ever dreamed.”

She only laughed again. “It was breathtaking. But Diodorus became tired. I could see him fading into elemental form and there was nothing I could do. So he brought me to Venice. It was in the middle ages, while the city was still evolving, but the Viale dei Belli Segreti was already there. I stayed with him until he faded entirely. And when he’d vanished, I grieved. I was angry…” She was talking faster now, becoming just manic enough to worry Rufus. “I knew I had a mission to fulfill. Diodorus was gone, but I wouldn’t let sorrow destroy me. I used anger to inspire me instead. Oh, I went on many other travels, of course, not least to the Spiral that had once been forbidden to us. I sampled the chill of Sibeyla and the softness of Elysion, but only the fire of Naamon held my heart. Still, I kept returning here. I couldn’t forget the Felynx. My heart always told me that there was unfinished business, something more to achieve.”

At the end of the street, they stepped from Duskland Venice to real Venice. The atmosphere shifted and they passed through a veil of blue smoke into a bustle of humans and the noise of boat engines. Posters and graffiti appeared on the crumbling walls. Crossing endless bridges, they worked their way out of the back streets to the ageless grandeur of San Marco. They were both dressed smartly but discreetly in tailored jeans, black shirts and dark coats. Aurata wore earrings of red fire opal, the color of her hair. A wintry fog gave the city a mystical atmosphere. Rufus looked around at stunning churches, at café lights and shop windows full of Murano glass twinkling through the murk.

“It’s very
Phantom of the Opera
tonight,” he said. “I want a black cloak and a mask.”

“You were going to tell me more about our brother?”

“I want to hear about your strange plans, and why your followers aren’t here with you. What are they up to?”

She ignored the question. “You said that Mist died in Amsterdam, at the hands of a jealous husband? Why couldn’t you save him?”

At that, Rufus felt a flash of anger. “Do you think I didn’t try? His body bled out, and his soul-essence fled. Have you any idea how hard it is to carry a corpse, day and night, until you find a way into the Otherworld? I was distraught. I reached a portal which brought us somewhere into Elysion, and I found a healing place of blue stone, but he remained dead and began to decay … finally, a kind Aelyr maiden found us and said it was no good. His essence was gone, and his body would turn to dust. I had to let him go.”

“I’m so sorry,” she breathed. Rufus moved to the canal edge and watched some gondolas tied up and bobbing gently on the water.

“You know the rest: how hard I searched. Meanwhile, some fanatics from the Spiral Court decided to hunt me down, so I lived in hiding on the border between Spiral and Earth with some friends…”

“Your entourage,” she put in.

“We were fugitives, but we still had fun, emerging from our secret pocket of the Otherworld to scare the locals … to perpetuate legends of the fair folk, encourage a little superstitious terror. They called us the Dubh Sidhe, dark elves—I like that, don’t you? We’d kidnap someone, play with their minds, then return them to the surface world quite mad.”

“Oh, Rufus. Unworthy.”

“We were bored,” he said, mock-defensively. “Anyway, that’s how I found a divine young man, the absolute image of Mist. I snatched him from his human family and kept him for ninety-odd years.”

“But you were mistaken?” said Aurata, her tone cool and shrewd.

Rufus felt pain in his throat, like claws. “I tried so hard to shock him awake. Extremes of pleasure, vile torments … everything I could devise to break down the dumb chrysalis and reveal Mistangamesh, the butterfly, inside. Nothing worked! Meanwhile, my obsession caused all my companions to desert me, out of sheer exasperation. I don’t blame them.”

“So you were left alone?”

“Apart from one beautiful, scared and mad human boy. Who died trying to save my life, which makes it all the more comically tragic. After all I’d done—still he tried to save me, without even thinking.”

“He must have made a great impression on you,” Aurata said thoughtfully, “for a mortal.”

“Even now, I don’t look back and see that I made a dreadful mistake. I just feel angry. Cheated.”

Aurata was quiet, watching him. She looked so young; to outside eyes, they might have been a honeymoon couple in their early twenties. Still the spoiled yet innocent son and daughter of the Felynx Sovereign Elect, Poectilictis.

“Angry with yourself?”

“No, with him, for his muleheaded stubbornness. All the time, I suspected that he was playing me along, pretending!”

Aurata laughed. “If he was, that would be delicious. That would serve you right.”

“Hm. I find humor in most things, but not this. How could I be so wrong?”

Delicately she cleared her throat. “If Mist wouldn’t come back, it was because he didn’t want to.”

“Don’t say that. No, go on, say it! I tried too hard. Mist is an idiot, always was. And I don’t care anymore. I’m done with him.”

Presently they climbed the long stairs of the Rialto Bridge and stood at the central balustrade, watching water traffic plowing below, the Grand Canal magnificent before them in its spooky cowl of fog. “You know, whether you made a mistake or not, we could probably still find him.”

Rufus reacted with an angry hiss. “No, Aurata, forget it. I’m never putting myself through that again.”

“What would you say, though, if you saw him?”

“Stop. I’d tell him to fuck himself on the Devil’s pitchfork. I’d push him off the highest cliff I could find, since he seems to like that sort of thing. Aurata, I was as good as dead when you found me. I cannot go back to that state, ever again.”