The Year's Best Horror Stories 7 (10 page)

"I said, every living soul," Pursuivant looked from her to Cobbett. "Living," he repeated.

He paced across the floor, and with his point scratched a perpendicular line upon it. Across this he carefully drove a horizontal line, making a cross. The pushing abruptly ceased.

"There it is, at the window again," breathed Laurel.

Pursuivant took long steps back to where the face hovered, with black hair streaming about it He scraped the glass with his silver blade, up and down, then across, making lines upon it. The face drew away. He moved to mark similar crosses on the other windows.

"You see," he said, quietly triumphant, "the force of old, old charms."

He sat down in a chair, heavily. His face was weary, but he looked at Laurel and smiled.

"It might help if we managed to pity those poor things out there," he said.

"Pity?" she almost cried out

"Yes," he said, and quoted:

"… Think how sad it must be
To thirst always for a scorned elixir,
The salt of quotidian blood."

"I know that," volunteered Cobbett. "It's from a poem by Richard Wilbur, a damned unhappy poet."

"Quotidian," repeated Laurel to herself.

"That means something that keeps coming back, that returns daily," Cobbett said.

"It's a term used to refer to a recurrent fever," added Pursuivant.

Laurel and Cobbett sat down together on the bed.

"I would say that for the time being we're safe here, declared Pursuivant. "Not at ease, but at least safe. At dawn, danger will go to sleep and we can open the door."

"But why are we safe, and nobody else?" Laurel cried out. "Why are we awake, with everyone else in this town asleep and helpless?"

"Apparently because we all of us wear garlic," replied Pursuivant patiently, "and because we ate garlic, plenty of it, at dinner time. And because there are crosses-crude, but unmistakable-wherever something might try to come in. I won't ask you
to
be calm, but I'll ask you to be resolute."

"I'm resolute," said Cobbett between clenched teeth. "I'm ready to go out there and face them."

"If you did that, even with the garlic," said Pursuivant, "you'd last about as long as a pint of whiskey in a five-handed poker game. No, Lee, relax as much as you can, and let's talk."

They talked, while outside strange presences could be felt rather than heard. Their talk was of anything and everything but where they were and why. Cobbett remembered strange things he had encountered, in towns, among mountains, along desolate roads, and what he had been able to do about them. Pursuivant told of a vampire he had known and defeated in upstate New York, of a werewolf in his own Southern countryside. Laurel, at Cobbett's urging, sang songs, old songs, from her own rustic home place. Her voice was sweet. When she sang "Round is the Ring," faces came and hung like smudges outside the cross-scored windows. She saw, and sang again, an old Appalachian carol called "Mary She Heared a Knock in the Night." The faces drifted away again. And the hours, too, drifted away, one by one.

"There's a horde of vampires on the night street here, then." Cobbett at last brought up the subject of their problem.

"And they lull the people of Deslow
to
sleep, to be helpless victims," agreed Pursuivant. "About this show,
The Land Beyond the Forest,
mightn't it be welcomed as a chance to spread the infection? Even a townful of sleepers couldn't feed a growing community of blood drinkers."

"If we could deal with the source, the original infection-" began Cobbett.

"The mistress of them, the queen," said Pursuivant. "Yes. The one whose walking by night rouses them all. If she could be destroyed, they'd all die property."

He glanced at the front window. The moonlight had a touch of slaty gray.

"Almost morning," he pronounced. 'Time for a visit to her tomb."

"I gave my promise I wouldn't go there," said Cobbett.

"But I didn't promise," said Pursuivant, rising. "You stay here with Laurel."

His silver blade in hand, he stepped out into darkness from which the moon had all but dropped away. Overhead, stars were fading out. Dawn was at hand.

He sensed a flutter of movement on the far side of the street, an almost inaudible gibbering of sound. Steadily he walked across. He saw nothing along the sidewalk there, heard nothing. Resolutely he tramped to the churchyard, his weapon poised. More grayness had come to dilute the dark.

He pushed his way through the hedge of shrubs, stepped in upon the grass, and paused at the side of a grave. Above it hung an eddy of soft mist, no larger than the swirl of water draining from a sink. As Pursuivant watched, it seemed to soak into the earth and disappear. That, he said to himself, is what a soul looks like when it seeks to regain its coffin.

On he walked, step by weary, purposeful step, toward the central crypt A ray of the early sun, stealing between heavily leafed boughs, made his way more visible. In this dawn, he would find what he would find. He knew that.

The crypt's door of open bars was held shut by its heavy padlock. He examined that lock closely. After a moment, he slid the point of his blade into the rusted keyhole and judiciously pressed this way, then that, and back again the first way. The spring creakily relaxed and he dragged the door open. Holding his breath, he entered.

The lid of the great stone vault was closed down. He took hold of the edge and heaved. The lid was heavy, but rose with a complaining grate of the hinges. Inside he saw a dark, closed coffin. He lifted the lid of that, too.

She lay there, calm-faced, the eyes half shut as though dozing.

"Chastel," said Pursuivant to her. "Not Gonda. Chastel."

The eyelids fluttered. That was all, but he knew that she heard what he said.

"Now you can rest," he said. "Rest in peace, really in peace."

He set the point of his silver blade at the swell of her left breast. Leaning both his broad hands upon the curved handle, he drove downward with all his strength.

She made a faint squeak of sound.

Blood sprang up as he cleared his weapon. More light shone in. He could see a dark moisture fading from the blade, like evaporating dew.

In the coffin, Chastel's proud shape shrivelled, darkened. Quickly he slammed the coffin shut, then lowered the lid of the vault into place and went quickly out. He pushed the door shut again and fastened the stubborn old lock. As he walked back through the churchyard among the graves, a bird twittered over his head. More distantly, he heard the hum of a car's motor. The town was waking up.

In the growing radiance, he walked back across the street By now, his steps were the steps of an old man, old and very tired.

Inside Laurel's cabin, Laurel and Cobbett were stirring instant coffee into hot water in plastic cups. They questioned the Judge with their tired eyes.

"She's finished," he said shortly.

"What will you tell Gonda?" asked Cobbett.

"Chastel was Gonda."

"But-"

"She was Gonda," said Pursuivant again, sitting down. "Chastel died. The infection wakened her out of her tomb, and she told people she was Gonda, and naturally they believed her." He sagged wearily. "Now that she's finished and at rest, those others-the ones she had bled, who also rose at night-will rest, too."

Laurel took a sip of coffee. Above the cup, her face was pale.

"Why do you say Chastel was Gonda?" she asked the Judge. "How can you know that?"

"I wondered from the very beginning. I was utterly sure just now."

"Sure?" said Laurel. "How can you be sure?"

Pursuivant smiled at her, the very faintest of smiles.

"My dear, don't you think a man always recognizes a woman he has loved?"

He seemed to recover his characteristic defiant vigor. He rose and went to the door and put his hand on the knob. "Now, if you'll just excuse me for awhile."

"Don't you think we'd better hurry and leave?" Cobbett asked him. "Before people miss her and ask questions?"

"Not at all," said Pursuivant, his voice strong again. "If we're gone, they'll ask questions about us, too, possibly embarrassing questions. No, we'll stay. Well eat a good breakfast, or at least pretend to eat it. And we'll be as surprised as the rest of them about the disappearance of their leading lady."

"I'll do my best," vowed Laurel.

"I know you will, my child," said Pursuivant, and went out the door.

5: Tanith Lee - Sleeping Tiger

Sky Tiger, the warrior, had been riding toward the city of North Mountain, his bow and quiver slung from his shoulder, his curved sword at his side. Handsome he was, the warrior Sky Tiger. A blue sheen on his unbound oil-black hair, a gold sheen on his saffron skin, the sheen of strength on the burnished iron of his breastplate. Despite that, or because of it, three miles back, where the dusty road emerged from the forest, Sky Tiger had met another warrior, similarly clad for fighting, and a fight there had been. Attack was frequent on any road, particularly in the lawless kingdom of North Mountain. And to ride in armor was generally to invite battle, just as to ride without it was to invite robbery and murder. Sky Tiger dealt as he found. He slew this challenger with commendable ease. Then, since he did not like to leave even the commonest villain in a ditch, Sky Tiger dug a shallow pit for him by way of temporary protection, and came searching for priests and a more honorable burial.

Finding a temple so swiftly seemed opportune.

It stood on the shore of a satin-smooth lake, amid a foam of blossoming peach trees. The low sun glinted on gold-scalloped roofs, scarlet pillars of painted wood and closed lacquer doors. And all about was an exceptional peace and quiet, not even the icy clink of wind chimes, or the whir of a cricket in the grass.

Having already met one source of trouble at the forest's edge, Sky Tiger suited his approach to the silence, rode cautiously among the trees, along the hillside, to the temple steps, and drew rein there.

At that moment, a beam of the declining sun shot clear and red between the peach boughs, and smote on the lacquer doors. As if in response to this solar knock, the doors slid gently open.

From a temple's entrance, one would expect priests to issue, serenely emaciated from their fasts and their spirituality, hairless and wise. But instead of priests, there issued forth two young women who might have stepped straight from the courts of an emperor, or from the ranks of an emperor's daughters.

Slender they were, and as alike as two moons. Their beautiful faces might have been fashioned from the palest and most translucent tawny ivory, their mouths of crimson cherries; their eyes were like the tilted wings of two black pigeons in flight. Nor were they rich in nature alone. Their garments, one robe pictured by lotus buds, one by orchids, were both embroidered with gold, and in their black hair sparkled tall diamond pins.

Sky Tiger regarded the young women a moment, his countenance as enigmatic as theirs but he thought his own thoughts. Then they bowed to him, and he to them, and the Lotus Moon spoke.

"Brave prince, we greet you in humility, and humbly ask why you have come to this place?"

Sky Tiger's horse had grown restive. He dealt with it, and said: "I am on the road to the city. I have come to offer to the gods of travelers."

Lotus Moon bowed again, more deeply.

"Brave prince, pardon my discourtesy. I am ashamed to rebuke you with your own lie."

"Why do you say I lie?"

"Your arrows and your sword say you lie, and the stain of another's blood on your sleeve."

Sky Tiger also bowed a second time.

"Your wit matches your loveliness. I admit I have slain a man. I would ask the priest for the rites."

The Orchid Moon spoke:

"The priests are gone. We alone are left to tend the temple."

Women did not tend temples, least of all in rough and lawless lands. Mystery deepened in the air as the sunset deepened among the peach trees.

"It is our joy to offer to those that visit us, the hospitality of this holy temple," said Orchid Moon.

Sky Tiger had heard of weirdly orgiastic houses here in the north. He sat his horse, considering the women, who lowered their gaze in simulated modesty. Back at the forest's edge, lay the unknown dead enemy, whom he had no actual obligation to attend to.

Curiosity and weariness getting the upper hand, Sky Tiger dismounted. He saw the women watching him under their lids, weighing his skills and looks, as if each eye were a delicate balance of polished jet

The sun had descended; blue darkness clung to the lake, the trees, the temple. Somewhere Sky Tiger's horse had been tethered, fed and watered. Lotus Moon and Orchid Moon now waited upon the comfort of Sky Tiger himself, as if he were an esteemed guest in their master's house-save that this house had no master. After he had submitted to the hot and cool baths and the robe laid out for him, the women conducted him, through a hall of gleaming gods, to a courtyard open to the stars and hung with gilded parchment lamps. Here among the scented shrubs, while the golden fish glanced and glittered in the marble basin, dishes of food were offered to Sky Tiger and fragile cups of fragrant yellow wine. While one woman knelt to serve him, the other played softly and most suitably upon a moon-guitar, plucking dainty and aesthetic notes from its four silken strings.

Everything was performed with the utmost taste and harmony, and Sky Tiger was letting curiosity slip into abeyance. Soothed, well fed, a little mellowed by the wine, his thoughts were turning to other pleasures with an irresistible but quite unhurried motion. Certainly, it was strange, the isolated temple magnificently provided with meat and matter. (How sweet the perfume of flowers and feminine flesh, how subtle the aroma of the wine.) A man lived hard and adventurously, as Heaven intended. But there was also rest. Even the tiger must sleep. And was the tiger less of a tiger when he slept? Naturally, hunters might steal upon him, but there were no hunters here. (And would the women come both together to the bed of lacquered wood and white silk curtaining they had artlessly shown him?)