The Poison Master Read online

  “Of course.” Elaniel rose fluidly up from the floor. Alivet could see her peering down through the tendrils. “Please rest. I will return later, with food.” She clapped her hands in delight.

  I am supposed to be her pet, Alivet thought sourly. Nothing more and nothing less. And when she is tired of me and I no longer amuse this ‘higher being,’ what will become of me then? It was easy to envisage Elaniel forgetting to feed her. This time she had no sharp instruments to hand, no alchematorium resources, but there had to be some way of getting out of here…

  Alivet settled herself as best she could and began to think.

  Chapter III

  NETHES

  By the time that Gulzhur Elaniel glided back into the room, Alivet had formed the glimmerings of a plan, but she had no time to put it into practice. Elaniel touched the vine mesh, and it shrank away to create a wider net. Alivet could have got her head through the spaces, but nothing more. She looked up at Elaniel. The woman wore a long shift, of what Alivet initially thought to be velvet. Then she saw that the dress was made of lichen: held together by a web of vines and starred with flowers. Elaniel's beautiful face was dusted with golden pollen. She looked as serene as calm water. Alivet hated her.

  “Some folk are coming,” Elaniel informed her. “They wish to see you.” She bent and peered through the mesh of Alivet's living cage. “I've told them a lot about you.”

  “Have you.”

  “Yes, and they are longing to see you, perhaps even to converse with you a little, if you are not too awed.”

  “I'll manage.”

  “Wonderful,” Elaniel said. Softly, she clapped her hands. The cage in which Alivet was held began to rise, gliding smoothly into the air. Alivet looked up in alarm and saw that she was being lifted by a cable of vines, coiling into the mat of dry growth that formed the ceiling.

  “What are you doing?” she cried.

  “They will wish to see you. You can't expect my visitors to crouch on the floor.”

  Elaniel was now standing beneath Alivet. The cage elongated and stretched so that Alivet could stand up. She did so, her joints cracking with relief. Grasping the bars of her cage, she looked down. Elaniel smiled up at her and beyond she could see others entering the room. They, too, were clad in lichen and flowers. Their hair snaked down their backs. Their eyes were bright and they whispered behind their long hands. A pungent, smoldering odor filled the room. Alivet's skin began to crawl.

  “You see? I told truth. She came here, this morning, transported bodily by the spirit of a drug—a visitor from the world of Yethes.”

  The Nethenassi surrounded Alivet's cage, pulling it down to tweak the bars aside. Their hands came through the mesh, plucking at Alivet's shift. She was sorely tempted to bite, but the hands were clawed and sharp.

  “Stop it!” she snapped. “Leave me alone.”

  Murmuring, frowning, the Nethenassi withdrew.

  “She is unsocial,” one of them said.

  “Yes, an animal.”

  “And you wish to teach her? Truly, Elaniel, you have a generous soul.” They clustered around Gulzhur Elaniel, cooing and whispering, until Alivet felt quite nauseated. Not even Ari Ghairen had been so complacent—and that was an unwise thought, for she found herself missing Ghairen with a sharpness that surprised her. Perhaps if she kept silent and refused to look at them, they might leave her alone. She sat down on the floor of her cage with her back to the Nethenassi and stared grimly toward the window. She could hear the seedpods exploding, and the crackling of distant fires. The Nethenassi whispered and laughed. Gently, they rocked the cage so that it shook. Alivet paid no attention and closed her eyes so that she would not have to look at them. She thought about Latent Emanation, concentrating hard.

  Whatever the truth of these labyrinthine machinations, she was convinced of one thing: if Elaniel and her friends approved of them, the Lords of Night intended nothing but harm. It seemed that Ghairen had been right after all: if they had once been perfect beings, they were surely now corrupt, and they corrupted those who touched them, like this bunch of sinister idiots.

  If she could bring about the Lords' downfall, she would do so. If she could break out of this prison and find her way out of here, she would risk returning to Hathes if she could not find her own world. Even Ghairen was a better choice than these simpering folk, so convinced of their own righteousness. The Nethenassi, stuck in the honey of their own complacency; the people of Hathes, with their rigidly paranoid society and murderous antics; and her own community on Latent Emanation, who had invented little that was new for a hundred years and whose only form of inquiry remained the Search, which if Elaniel spoke the truth, was nothing more than a retrograde quest for a miserable world.

  And Alivet thought: All the worlds are stagnant. We have all become trapped and embedded, like flies in river amber. But how are we to transform and break free? How am I going to get out of here? In the crucible of frustration and anger, however, her thoughts were beginning to crystallize. She had come via the drug. That meant that unless she could find another portal, like the one by which Ghairen had brought her to Hathes, she would have to use the drug and the roads by which its spirit traveled to take her home.

  She opened her eyes to find that the rustling, twittering visitors had gone away. The bars of her cage had once more shrunk together, so that her view of the room beyond was filtered by tendrils. Hearing Elaniel returning, she lay hastily down on the cage floor and feigned sleep. Distantly, she heard Elaniel's coaxing, cajoling voice, but eventually it grew silent. Perhaps she really did doze, for when she once more looked up, the room had grown quiet and dark.

  Now, then, was the time to try out her plan. It was, in essence, simple. The tabernanthe had taken her out onto the road of the unconscious, but the mayjen had kidnapped her. And from what the spirit of the mayjen had implied, it was not Ghairen who had poisoned her, but Iraguila and her shiffrey accomplice. The mayjen was not a proper poison at all, but a hallucinogen, planted like a dangerous seed in the depths of her being.

  If a drug had brought her here, then a drug could take her back again. She needed new allies—one to deal with the mayjen, and the other to take her back between the worlds. This time, Alivet had every intention of going home.

  Sitting cross-legged on the floor of the cage, Alivet reached out and prodded one of the furled blossoms. At first, for a dismayed moment, she thought the lily might remain tightly shut, but gradually it began to unwind, releasing its soporific perfume upon the air. Reacting to her activity, it was trying to put her to sleep, but rather than attempting to resist it, Alivet breathed deeply, inhaling the perfume until it filled her lungs. This time, however, she treated the narcotic scent as a potential friend, rather than an unwelcome invader. She remembered her long training as an apothecary, her experiences in the Search. She must seek to ally herself with the drug instead of fighting it. Persuasion, not attack: that must be the key. As the narcotic perfume sank farther into her veins, Alivet began softly to converse with the drug.

  “You are welcome in me,” she told it. “Let me learn from you. Teach me what you are.”

  Slowly, she felt the animating spirit of the narcotic begin to uncurl also, just like its attendant blossom. It felt fragile and strange, a barely conscious presence, and she realized that the narcotic's spirit, too, must spend most of its life in sleep. It was like talking to a dream, something half real. Deep inside her mind, she felt the presence of the mayjen beginning to uncurl, slithering from her subconscious; the enemy within. How could it not know what she was planning to do? It was inside her head, after all. That meant that at some point in the not-too-distant future, she would have to confront the mayjen, but for the moment, it could be ignored.

  “Can you hear me?” Alivet murmured, inside her head. And after a long moment, a small, sweet voice said, “I hear you. Who are you, and what manner of thing?” It was the voice of the narcotic drug of the lilies.

  “I am a human. Your corporea
l self—the drug that houses your spirit—is inside my body. It is affecting me, making me sleepy.”

  “And then you can dream!” the spirit said, with a kind of exultation.

  “I do not want to dream here,” Alivet said, patiently. “It isn't the right place for me. I need a special place to dream.”

  She did not know if the spirit understood, but then it said, “Where is this place?”

  “It lies outside this room. Indeed, it is outside this world. If you and I were to dream there, spirit, then our dreams would be marvelous. I could show you incredible things, inside my mind. We would work together. But not here.”

  “Can we go there?” The narcotic was intrigued.

  “I can't. There are two other drug-spirits in me. One is my ally, the other is my enemy. My enemy is holding me prisoner. Help me to be free of it, and we will travel together.”

  “But I have been told to keep you here,” the spirit said, puzzled. “Why should that be?”

  “I do not know. Perhaps the person who told you did not realize that I could dream better elsewhere. I am sure she means things only for the best.”

  “Maybe that is so,” the narcotic mused.

  Inside Alivet's mind, the mayjen stirred suddenly, like a serpent that has caught sight of a bird.

  “Who is that?” the narcotic asked.

  “It is an enemy. Can you help me defeat it?”

  “I have no weapons, no toxins. I am a drug of sleep, nothing more.”

  “Precisely,” Alivet said. “Put the mayjen to sleep.”

  She could almost see the particles of the narcotic seeping deep into her brain: running down its channels, leaping across the connection points that linked thought to thought. She did not know if this would work. It was nothing more than a mimicry of the healers' art: to use a drug to fight a sickness, or to combat the effects of another drug.

  Using the imaging techniques that she had been taught during her apothecarial training, Alivet sought to see what was happening inside her head. She glimpsed the mayjen, its snakelike tail whisking around the corners of her unconscious, hiding in deep wells of uncertainty, behind the spikes of paranoia and the lagunae of guilt. Alivet took a breath. The narcotic particles of the lily slipped after the mayjen, dispersing into a perfumed cloud which gradually grew to fill the chambers of her brain. Alivet felt herself sliding away, faster and faster down the slope to sleep. But now she could feel the tabernanthe, stirring. She glimpsed its face: it looked like Celana. Its eyes were huge and dark.

  “No!” she cried to the tabernanthe. “I've got to stay awake—I have to direct you, tell you where to take me.”

  “Do not worry,” the voice of the tabernanthe said, serenely. “I know where to go. I have cousins there.”

  Alivet's inner vision was beginning to dim. From the corner of her mind's eye she saw the figure that represented the mayjen sink down beneath the influence of the narcotic, curling its tail beneath it and folding its hands in sleep. It was defeated. But so was Alivet.

  “And now I will take you home,” the tabernanthe said.

  “Wait!”—but it was too late. Alivet felt her body dissolve, transported into the space between the worlds—and then she was pulled abruptly back into the cage.

  “Where are you going?” Gulzhur Elaniel said.

  Alivet's eyes flew open. The woman stood in front of her, smiling with terrible sweetness, but inside her, the drug was continuing to work, momentarily hindered by adrenaline.

  “You,” Elaniel said, “are not going anywhere.” She lashed out and her fingers caught Alivet's arm, the long nails razor- sharp. Alivet struck out, catching Elaniel on the side of her face. She grasped the woman's silken hair and pulled. Elaniel emitted a high, eerie shriek. Vines fell from the ceiling, raveling into a noose. Alivet ducked. Tendrils rose up from the floor, clutching at her ankles. She kicked free and threw herself at Elaniel. The woman was howling, a long ululation that was like nothing Alivet had ever heard. It did not sound like anything from a human throat.

  As her body made contact with Elaniel's, the cry abruptly stopped. Alivet had a glimpse of Elaniel's face beneath her, mouth open, hair streaming into a sudden abyss. The tabernanthe was taking them both between the worlds. Alivet glanced over her shoulder. Behind her was the room; a mass of twisting vines. Before her gaped the universe.

  CONJUNCTION

  But let that man with better sense advice That of the world least part to us is read: And daily how through hardy enterprise, Many great Regions are discoveréd, Which to late age were never mentionéd…

  EDMUND SPENSER, The Faerie Queene

  Chapter I

  PRAGUE 1584

  Dee stood in the center of the chamber, dressed in a long plain robe. At the desk sat Kelley with the mirror before him, already deep in trance. It was close to midnight. Kneeling, Dee drew a rough chalk circle about himself, then set about inscribing the calculations that would open the gap between the worlds. A skein of mathematical incantations, interspersed with sigils, began to cover the floor around the circle: the language of the universe, designed to unweave reality and open gaps between. From the direction of the desk Kelley said softly, “It comes.”

  “The angel? Ask if it can come through.”

  “It says, not yet. The calculations are not yet complete. The formula must be finished, to rend the veil that remains between dimensions.”

  Dee scribbled furiously, drawing each formula to its logical conclusion. As he did so, he became aware that the air about him was growing brighter, as though the sun had come forth at midnight and was creeping across the sill.

  “It comes,” Kelley repeated, and now Dee sensed the presence of the angel at his shoulder. His hand flew above the boards, inscribing formulae, and as he reached the very last equation, the world around him changed and tore. A small hole appeared in the air, through which a cold wind streamed. As Dee stared, the hole widened and became a rent, ragged and drifting. The angel stood behind it, and Dee realized that the being's previous appearances had been nothing more than a shadow of this one. The angel's four-faced presence was intensely physical; it struck him like a blow.

  “Come through, then,” the angel's ringing voices instructed him.

  Dee paused, uncertain. The angel seemed huge and solid, but he could sense movement all around it.

  “Your calculations are imperfect. The portal is not stable. Step through,” the angel commanded. Dee took a tottering step forward and, after a moment of pure fear, threw himself through the rent in the air.

  The chalk circle, the room, and Kelley himself were all gone. Dee stood in an echoing chamber that hummed like a hive of bees. The angel towered above him.

  “Where is this?”

  “This is the ship.”

  Dee looked uncertainly around him. The place in which they stood was more like an empty hull; he could see the great metal ribs of the thing arching over his head, but there was no sign of furniture or fittings, no sea chests or cargo. But why should an angel need such things? A still small voice inside his mind said: Why would angels need a ship at all? But of course they did not; it was surely for the convenience of humans only, who could not travel the roads of the stars as the angels surely did.

  “It is spare and plain,” the angel said, revolving so that he was faced with its female side. Dee wondered if it had heard his thoughts. “The journey will not take long, but it is hard on humankind.” With that, the angel touched Dee on the cheek and he felt himself crumple to the floor.

  He woke to find himself in the same place, curled on the metal floor of the ship like a child. He was sore and stiff, and the humming note of the ship ran through him as though he was a bell that had been struck. His head splitting, Dee clambered to his feet. The angel was nowhere to be seen. A dim pallor was cast down from a row of lights in the roof. This must be the hold of the ship rather than the ship itself, Dee thought. At least if all went well, there would be room for the Family, who by now numbered some eight hund
red people.

  As Dee stared up into the metal arches of the ship, the angel came back, stepping out of nowhere.

  “We have arrived.”

  “We are there?” Dee echoed, stupidly. It seemed so swift, so improbable.

  “Follow me.”

  Dee stumbled behind the angel to a doorway, which opened as they drew close. Pale sunlight streamed in, casting Dee's shadow behind him, but the angel, he observed, cast no shadow. It drew back, until it stood behind the door.

  “Go,” it said. “Look. Be careful.”

  Dee hastened to the door and realized nearly too late why the angel had given its warning. They were hovering some fifty feet above a great expanse of river and marsh. A flock of birds akin to herons rocketed up from a reed bed and soared past the door. Below, in the shining water, Dee saw a school of fish flick their tails and vanish into the depths. A strange bulbous shadow cast the reed beds into darkness: it was a moment before Dee realized that it was the shadow of the ship itself. He leaned precariously out and squinted up. A great black hull, pitted with craters as if by the pox, stretched above him. The ship began to move, drifting over an area of land. The earth was dark red and looked fertile; there were few trees.

  “It seems a rich land,” Dee said over his shoulder, somewhat heartened.

  “It will be yours.”

  “What of the jackal-headed men?”

  “They keep to the deep delta. They will not trouble you here.”

  If the adventurers to the New World can deal with savages, Dee thought, so, too, can we. The air was fresh and sweet, smelling differently to that of Earth, and the light was different, too: paler, and seeming to come from another angle. He wondered if Kelley could see what he was seeing, through the window of the black mirror.