“Why are you doing this?” he says. “Enough with your contortions and sleight of mouth. What exactly do you want?”
She shrugs. “Answer my question first: do you care to find out the secret power of the Duchess of White? Would you like to know, my Lord?”
He stares, and an indescribable thing appears in his expression; he is transfigured and cast far away from here; he is vacant and wandering in a place of hope, and is living in a different moment than she. “No,” he says at last. “I actually don’t want to know. I don’t care what the devil it is, not a whit.”
“Then why are you so unwilling to part with your own secret?” she exclaims.
“Because, damn you, I don’t have one!”
Silence. They stare at one another.
“Yes . . .” he says then, quietly. “My grand secret is that I don’t have a secret. At least not one of which I am aware. And neither was my father—or any other blessed ancestor—aware of any secret power, only of being senselessly imprisoned within this hateful place.”
Izelle exhales. “Oh. . . .”
And now the Duke gets up and begins to pace restlessly, knocking his chair out of the way with one angry movement of his foot.
“Well? How do you like my revelation, my Lady?” he says, spitting the words out. “Like it or not, it is a fact. We have all tried to take a step outside the gates countless years, countless number of times, yet—there is something out there, something preventing us, every time. Unlike our supposed powers, it is a genuine physical force, it is real and hard and strong. I’ve tried myself, repeatedly, and—” He throws up a hand in resignation.
“How did it feel?” she asks, speaking in an odd manner while looking ahead of herself, not at him. “How did it feel when you tried to pass the boundary?”
“How? It felt like hell’s bowels; always does. At first, there’s an iron wall invisibly pressing, and yet molding against you somehow—not as true metal but as something that’s similarly firm and cold and smooth—and this something does not allow you any further movement. And then, if you press on further, struggle against it—as I’ve done—there’s a sort of darkness. And then your will and your mind goes blank.”
“And then?”
“That’s all. I’ve found myself losing consciousness every time, and waking up lying on the ground, within the boundary of the castle. Either that, or Harmion would drag me off to bed, and when I came to, would hover over me with the physician, the two of them fussing like a pair of laying hens.”
He grows silent, for there is little else to say. Then he sits down again on his chair, first moving it away from the work table, away from her, into the corner of the room.
He closes his eyes. Moments line up into armies and pass by in regimental regularity. The oil lamp continues to cast its warm glow, beginning to smoke slightly when a tiny flying insect enters the top of its neck, flitters, and eventually capsizes in hot lipid death.
“Will you please leave now?” he says softly, turning away from her, from everything. “Now that you have what you came for. I’ve told you the truth. I’ve sworn to it, haven’t I? Despite the fact that I won the imbecile round of an imbecile game of ours, and you lost, I’ve told you. Because—for a few moments, I must admit—you’ve given me a reason to breathe, and entertained me with a children’s game. I’ve never really—played with anyone in such a way. Thank you.”
And then he lets himself sink, submerging into a kind of separate private consciousness, locking the world away, not caring for anything, unaware of his own body, except for the dark waves of depression; it is entering him at each psychic opening, coming up from the nether places in the earth that run deep beneath the castle. . . .
Except that when next he becomes aware of the surroundings, coming to himself who knows how long afterwards, she is still there, standing small and grotesque a few feet away.
The candlelight seeps in an even glow from behind her silhouette, a halo of a saint who’s stepped out from one of the tapestries—except the bright corona encompasses all of her.
And in that glow, she approaches.
She draws near; is leaning to watch him, serious and different (something new is indeed there; he has never yet seen this beatific aspect of her), and her eyes are liquid with compassion.
And in that, she is terrifying.
“Rossian . . .” she whispers.
“What? Still here?” he says harshly, straightening in his chair. “My Lady Izelle, has anyone taught you common courtesy, ever? I told you, I told you the truth! Now, begone, little demon! I’ve even thanked you—hah!—thanked you for sickening and annoying me in a novel way, unlike those other Ducal dullards, to the extent of actually bringing me enjoyment, an odd moment or two—”
“Coming from you, it is complimentary, I suppose.” She speaks matter-of-factly, still leaning over him, her unearthly gaze never leaving his face. And then she says something else, a thing so deep and serious that breath catches in his throat.
“What would you say to me if I showed you a way of escaping your ageless prison?”
“You what?” he whispers. He is completely stricken, and rendered inarticulate.
“You don’t believe me, do you? That it can be done? That a Ducal Heir can simply get up, completely resolved to accomplish it, and walk out of his or her castle? Well, Sir, it has been done, already. A certain Duchess of White decided she’s had enough, plainly disgusted with her lot. And so she just walked through the gates, and out of her land.
“That Duchess is I, my Lord, as you might’ve already guessed in a moment of clarity. I am Janerizel of White. And I’ve come here to help you.”
He stares at her coldly, unblinking, and then mutters. “I knew there was something fishy about you, something not quite right, that stank of deception and tomfoolery. Why didn’t you simply tell me all of this in the first place, why all the lies? What am I supposed to believe?”
Her rosebud mouth curves into a little sad smile. “Ah, my Lord, a Duchess alone has to be careful. But then so are you—careful and alone. Indeed, it’s always this way, isn’t it? Never trust a soul. This way, even now, you’ll not be a bit surprised.”
“Of course not,” he says. “I wouldn’t be surprised until I believed you. And how can I? You claim impossible nonsense.”
“It is not nonsense! I am the Duchess of White, you fool, idiot and imbecile! Mistrusting, dry-souled wretch! A frog in your own swampy filth is what you are, decaying and rotting in this blue blood hole! I am here, in your castle, and how do you think I got here?”
The saint has gone and in her place is a harridan who is screaming in his face, bits of her spittle striking him in an oddly intimate manner, so that he feels it on his cheeks, feels it coming from her doll’s mouth. Tiny living projectiles, from her to him.
She moves away from him then, furious, her eyes attaining a mad quality, dilated and intense.
“I don’t know,” he says, his lips trembling from the effort to contain an involuntary smile. “You should’ve been forthright with me from the beginning. Why else all this foolery on your part? You could still be pretending, on behalf of your Cousin, in order to get some other non-existent but suspected information out of me—”
“I don’t have a cousin! I made her up! Lies, all I’ve told you! I am the Jane I told you about, and I’m Izelle. Both are me. Jane is when I’m ordinary and everyday-dull. Izelle is when I feel alive.”
“And this is feeling alive? Fair enough,” he says, rearranging himself in his seat yet again. “Supposing you really are the Duchess (an exotic fool, more like), how the devil did you escape? And why come help me?”
“Infernal questions,” she says. “Why can’t you simply believe me—” and then, pauses. “What am I saying? If I were in your place, I’d not believe such a lunatic as myself either, not for anything, no. . . .”
“How did you escape?” he repeats, his tone neutral, so as not to startle her out of whatever possible wondrous thing s
he is about to tell him. He is alert, waiting.
The Duchess of White begins to pace. “The very first unexpected thing to happen was that I found out my secret.”
The Duke watches her, listening with all his being, and yet on another level he is busy reconciling the details of her with the reality; Duchess is a chit in a jester costume, with a face like a toy and the lips of a doll, and the manner of a madwoman. He is in the same room with another genuine blue blood of the realm, inside his very own castle! She is here, and she has broken free of the curse, somehow! Or . . . he could be dreaming. Or, even worse, this is all a malicious lie, the perpetuation of some dark charade. . . .
Izelle continues. “Once I found out the secret, all else followed. Yes, now you are surprised, I can see. But it’s true. Just as you, I didn’t know it either, the so-called secret power of White. Indeed, I suspect that at first none of the Dukes are aware of their power, having to discover it as I have. It’s the process in which lies the key.”
“What is your secret?” he asks, in genuine innocence.
Enough, he wants to scream, tell me, tell me, tell me!
Her gaze is elsewhere, doesn’t meet his. “Since I’ve lost in our little silly game, since I’ve forced myself into your noble company and tormented you all day, I owe you the truth. And so I’ll tell you everything—but in due time. First, your secret. You see, I am helping you and not just any other Ducal offspring, for a rather selfish reason: I need you. Your sorcerous power is the only thing that can help—”
She cuts off her words. It’s as though she is afraid to proceed.
He gets up, beginning to say “But I have no power,” then says instead: “What significance is there in my knowing my secret power, Duchess?”
“I think . . . when you gain an awareness of it, you will also have an awareness of the indescribable boundary that holds us all in. Knowing it, you will know how to transcend it.”
Her words are abstract, yet accompanied by an expression so secure in knowledge, that for once Rossian, more doubting than the devil he so likes to invoke, thinks it prudent to believe her.
“What must I do?” he asks curtly.
Janerizel smiles at him. “You already know that I meddle with the arts . . . well then. Since I was informed by sources beyond this mortal coil that by its nature my secret bears a paradoxical relationship to yours, I was able to infer what your secret is. But—oh, what a truly heaven-decreed opportunity fell to me at the gates of your castle! When I saw that vendor of curiosities with his peculiar remains, I suppose it all fell into place at once—everything. And I’ll explain it all, afterwards. I really will. . . .
“But first, you, my Lord, must overcome your natural disgust, as you call it, and do the humanly impossible. Bring Nairis the Fabled One back to life.”
III: Deepening
They are in a small inner courtyard of the castle, this one a particularly isolated spot the size of a monk’s cell, a narrow space between uninterrupted walls with only one decrepit entrance marked off by a swinging door of ancient wood mounted on rusty iron hinges. The purpose of this outer room open wide to the elements is unknown, buried in the past. Mayhap it once serves as an herb garden, a meeting room for secret lovers or conspirators, a place to isolate unruly children or to keep domesticated beasts and their feed troughs. Now, there is nothing here but beaten dirt for a floor, with possible slabs of stone buried deep underneath, with high walls that are looming above them on all four sides like mountains, engendering the illusion of being at the bottom of a well. There is but a patch of ink sky overhead, with several pinpoints of stars.
The butler, Harmion, directs servants to set up a narrow long table and two chairs. No one is in the mood for sitting, however. The funeral box is placed on the tabletop which is covered by a long spread of chamois cloth, with two candles on both ends, sending tiny feeble light into the nighttime blackness. They are safe from high winds here, the candles and their droplet amber flames. Safe, yet oddly vulnerable to a possible wrath of sky. . . .
“Look, my Lord, no moon tonight . . .” Janerizel says, standing a little to the side. Her words are innocent.
“Really?” Rossian’s voice is drenched in his customary cold sarcasm. “What is this thing, this moon? With so little empty sky in which I can look up, it’s a rarity that I glimpse the moon, even if it is full.”
“I suppose this is but one of the few places within your castle grounds where you get any open sky at all. Be grateful for that much—in my castle where I was imprisoned, I had no such courtyard. I never saw the sky, except out of a window.”
Such a minor observation. And she does not speak bitterly at all. Yet he has to look at her nevertheless, seeing again an instant of pathos in her little figure, her wretched clothing (why does she wear it?), her childish eyes. Again, almost a twinge of pity.
In the meantime, servants depart, closing the heavy wooden door behind them, no doubt wondering at the newest madness of their Duke who is up to something ungodly in the middle of the night.
Rossian watches the last man leave. And then he walks slowly, his movement marking the perimeter of walls, the empty open space beyond which lies more stone, thick as the height of a man or maybe the span of an arm. He thinks of that massive span as he stretches out his hand to touch the wall, brushing fingers against it as he walks, to be repulsed initially by its wet slickness of moss and lichen in spots; stone perspiring everywhere, covered with cold moisture of the night air.
Izelle stands restless, seeming to feel his motion, to mark it; maybe she detects a faint gathering of power. She observes the thin elegant figure of Duke Rossian, and—could it be?—she might suddenly imagine him at the castle gates all those countless times, as he leans against the air, places his body in such a position that he could not be naturally supported, hand outthrust just as it is now, virtually resting against a wall of nothing. She might visualize him pushing while power bounces back and the unbreachable boundary holds, its metaphysical resonances like echoes in his mind. . . .
He lets go of the wall and steps away, turning to her. “Here we are. What comes next?”
“This. You must approach the box filled with death and focus upon it. Invoke your power and the extent of your arts, ponder what it is that you can do to revive her.”
Revive her. . . . What right, to disturb ancient bones? he thinks suddenly. Doubt assails him—not doubt of his ability but doubt of purpose—and it fills him with momentary vertigo. To pull her out of the eternal sleep into the dank and dreary here and now. And for what? What if she wants oblivion, what if she does not want to live? What if. . . .
Rossian approaches the table. The dark is silent but for the humming of several night moths flying to the candle flames. He stands regarding the rectangular black, red and gold thing before him, wordless.
“Then it’s true . . .” Janerizel says. “I can even now sense the turbulence of power, the aversion you feel for it, for the death within.”
“Yes. . . .” His voice is a whisper. “I’ve never realized this before, not with all my learning and pursuit of the mysteries of power—truth is, I am naturally repulsed by death. Repulsed, in the way of sorcery. I’ve always made light of it, thinking myself to be but overly fastidious. . . .”
No, not repulsed, no. The bones sleep . . . so sweetly. Must they be woken? Let them be, oh let them be. . . .
“Touch it,” she whispers in turn. “Open the box and place the remains before you on the table.”
“I wonder who she was, this Nairis, when she lived. And how that merchant ever procured her, since supposedly she is blue blood—or was. It’s strange, really. I can’t think of any Ducal branch that would allow such a careless mockery of their deceased. I suspect that he or someone before him might’ve stolen her unfortunate bones—Only, how is that possible?”
“My Lord Rossian,” she says, an unexpected hardness in her voice. “Stop stalling. You must do it. The night is cold, and your aversion will not lessen.??
?
He throws her one look, his eyes narrowing from habit of disdain. Only, it is not disdain. If only she could know. . . .
And then slowly, with both hands, he reaches for the box.
It might be a trick of unsteady candlelight blown about by the softest gusts of wind from the spaces overhead, but there is something; strangeness is happening. A pearlescent glow, very faint, begins to envelop his hands. There is a delicate green tint to the whiteness, different from the yellow-gold candle glow, a hint of phosphor, swirling waves of mother-of-pearl. It gathers about his fingertips, noticeable only in contrast to the candle’s golden hues, something that never would be apparent in daylight.
His hands start moving in the manner of a caress; they stroke the outside of the box for an instant only, brushing against worn wood (when only moments ago they touched moss-slick stone) while the light about them deepens. And then the Duke forces the seal that holds the thing closed, a seal never meant to be disturbed.
There is breaking, a parting along the wood seams.
As he does this, the Duke exhales a shuddering sigh, no longer conscious of her who stands a few feet away. Unaware of anything extraneous, he raises the lid with both hands and looks inside, into the gaping maw. . . .
But again she intrudes upon him. “Take the bones and dust, and arrange them. On the table surface, yes, and form them according to—”
“I know,” he says. “Be silent.”
And for once, possibly feeling the force blooming from him, she does not speak another word, only stands somehow immobilized, chilled, for her own vaguely private reasons, and looks on.
It must be noted at this point that there is no blood-letting to be involved. The Duke is impressed that she does not inquire after it, does not insist upon blood sacrifice. For it appears that she indeed knows the advanced details, the true techniques of profound-level arcane arts. Blood sorcery is not only of the dark, but it is also of the lower echelon of methodologies; a resurrection attempted via the killing of a living creature—a parasitic borrowing of the life force—will only result in a temporary animated golem, a zombie, a distasteful animatron without true autonomy or life, only to be directed by external forces.