The Poison Master Read online

  “When we come—if we come—can we bring beasts with us? The Family should like to raise cattle, for instance.”

  “We shall advise you.”

  “And now, may we make landfall? I should like to study this place, to see what manner of plants and creatures are here.”

  “The ship will not land.”

  Slowly, the door began to hiss shut before Dee's face.

  “Wait! Please, I must see more—” But the door had closed. The ship shivered and hummed.

  “The portal you opened will not stay open much longer. You must refine your calculations,” the angel said.

  “Will you help me?”

  “I will.”

  This time, the angel did not immediately send Dee into unconsciousness. As it was reaching to touch his cheek, a note like a great bell sounded, deep within the ship. The angel spun around and vanished, leaving Dee rocking back on his heels.

  “Where have you gone?” he called, but there was no reply. Dee walked slowly along the hold of the ship, staring up at the metal arches and laminated girders. When he had first stepped into the craft, an idea had struck him with heretical weight, and now he was free to give it a degree of attention. If he was honest with himself, Dee admitted, the notion had been biting at the heels of his imagination for some considerable time.

  The idea was terrifying, but as Dee contemplated it, it fell seamlessly into place like the workings of one of Mercator's miraculous astrolabes. Dee was thinking: What if these beings are not angels at all? What if they are simply other to ourselves, just as the savages of the Americas are other? Nothing that Dee had read of the people in the colonies of the New World suggested that they possessed less wit than Englishman or Spaniard, whatever the clerics might say. It had long been Dee's opinion that the natives of the Americas simply pursued different knowledge, in a different way.

  To these “angelic” beings, he reasoned, it is likely that we are as savages: primitive and uncouth, possessing limited intellect and groping our way toward the light as a flower does toward the sun, but nonetheless worthy of attention. And then the stale air of the hold seemed to stir and blow colder, for Dee thought: These beings are as far above us as we are above the Indians, and see how we have treated the peoples of the Americas. But there had been no sign from the angels, or whatever they might be, that their intentions were hostile, and they spoke of God with reverence. Yet what if that was nothing more than an evil lie?

  The dim light pulsed and changed. Dee turned, to see the angel standing behind him. For a moment, it looked like something else entirely. It seemed to have a different shape, monstrous and contorted. Then the vision was gone and the angel was once more bland and four-visaged. Was that image no more than a mask, to hide horror?

  “Tell me,” Dee said, very softly. “What manner of being are you?”

  He thought he saw a flicker in its eyes, but the angel did not reply. Instead, it reached out and he felt its cold fingers touch his cheek. When he next awoke, he was lying on the floor of the chamber in Prague, with Kelley and Niclaes hovering anxiously over him.

  Chapter II

  HATHES

  Elaniel's hand was locked around Alivet's wrist as they fell, and her touch burned. Alivet struck out, but failed to dislodge Elaniel's grip. Against the span of stars, Elaniel's serene face was stripped down to a mask: gaunt and bony like a leaf in autumn, her teeth sharp as thorns. She hissed, and Alivet saw a spiny tongue protrude. Elaniel spat at her and Alivet turned her head away, but she still felt the acid prickle of the woman's saliva spatter across her cheek.

  Elaniel's tongue curled up inside her mouth, a worm within the bud. Before she could spit again, Alivet hauled her imprisoned wrist up to her mouth and gave Elaniel's hand a swift sharp bite. The hand opened; Elaniel shrieked. Alivet, still falling, kicked her away and watched her spin down toward the field of suns. Soon, she was no bigger than a lizard in a meadow of daisies, and then she was gone.

  Alivet gasped, but her lungs took in no air. It was as though she were a child again, diving for frogs in the marsh and staying down too deep and too long. She spread her arms and dived down the silvery road that the drug was unraveling beneath her. The terrible cold gave way to a sultry blast of heat and Alivet fell through subconscious space to land heavily on the carpeted floor of her room in Ghairen's apartment.

  The breath was knocked out of her. She lay retching on the stones, reveling in the sudden warmth. The room smelled of the smoke and hot coals from the brazier, with the familiarly acrid chemical tang of the air of Hathes. Alivet hauled herself shakily to her feet.

  Ari Ghairen said from the shadows. “So, how was your trip? What of the tabernanthe?” He spoke lightly, but she could hear the relief in his voice. Alivet spun to face him. He looked the same as ever, precise and elegant in the voluminous dark robes, but when she looked into his eyes, she saw only the fear fading from them. And Alivet, noting her own foolishness with a distant amazement, flung herself upon him. He had brought her to these nightmare worlds under duress, had held her a virtual prisoner, doubtless had lied, but he was not Gulzhur Elaniel and at that moment this was all Alivet cared about. Ghairen's arms tightened around her. Into her ear, he murmured, “Are you all right? What happened to your face?”

  “There was a woman. Elaniel. She held me captive on a world called Nethes. I got away. She spat at me.”

  “Nethes?” He held her away for a moment, to look at her, then drew her back. She felt no inclination to resist. “However did you get all the way to Nethes?”

  “The drug took me. Not the tabernanthe. Something else.” When she got a moment, Alivet thought, she would have plenty to say about Iraguila Ust, but it could wait. Ghairen frowned.

  “We'll discuss this later. Her name was Elaniel? A Kherubim name, given to her by her masters, most probably. Yes, they are often filled with bitterness and bile. Your face is bleeding—if we don't treat it, it will scar.”

  “She said they were enlightened,” Alivet said. She put her hand to her burned cheek and her fingertips came away touched with blood. Ghairen fetched a cloth and a salve, and gently began to treat the burns.

  “Well, they are certainly a more advanced form of humanity in certain senses, but unfortunately their gifts entail that they often have a peculiar disdain for the lower forms, such as you and me. They spend hours of their days in poetry and meditation, and human flesh is served on their menus. They have entered into symbiosis with the plant life of their world; you'll have noted that vegetables are not long on sympathy. And now,” Ghairen said, looking down at Alivet's hands as they rested upon his robe, “after your experiences with the people of Nethes and my erstwhile governess, you will not know what to think, or who to trust. Can I suggest the lesser evil of myself?”

  Too tired to protest, Alivet nodded. She did not want him to let her go. The blood on her cheek had smudged his robe.

  “Come and sit down. By the way, my daughter is up and about, but we have not seen Ust since her dismissal—which, I now realize, came rather too late.”

  Alivet looked up at that.

  “You know who she is?”

  “Ust is not her real name, nor did I have her father murdered. I looked into it, most carefully, when she first inquired about the post—occasionally these things slip one's mind, you know. I knew she wasn't who she claimed to be, but she laid a false trail behind her, posing as the daughter of a prominent politician, born out of wedlock. That's common enough here. Having found one concealed scandal, I didn't look for another. But it seems that Ust is a provocateur of the Lords of Night. I was deceived.” He grimaced. “Not a pleasing confession to have to make.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “From the little that you have told me, it seems probable that she has been working with Elaniel. And I have also found evidence that she is connected to a religious group.” He guided Alivet to the couch.

  “The Sanguinants? She had friends among them, but I didn't know what they were.”
/>   “The Sanguinants are the religious order I mentioned to you—the remnants of our own manner of Unpriest class.”

  “You said they had been chastened… Maybe they want to bring the Lords back to Hathes, seek to regain power. The Nethenassi aren't the only ones to ally themselves with humanity's enemies. The Unpriests would hate to see the back of the Lords, and so would the Nine Families. No doubt it is the same with the Sanguinants.”

  Ghairen's gaze narrowed. “What else did Ust tell you?”

  “That she wanted to help the shiffrey.”

  “I see. How much do you know about the shiffrey?”

  “That they were once a noble people, living close to nature.”

  Ghairen snorted. “They certainly live close to nature. They've always been as you see them now. They hide in burrows and seize the young of rival clans in which to lay their eggs. They are very good at deception, at psychological manipulation. They can induce all manner of impressions and ideas in the minds of their prey.”

  “Why do you keep the shiffrey as servants, in that case? Aren't they dangerous?”

  “The nerve-toxins and hallucinogens that they produce are useful. The maid is milked, on a regular basis, by a special machine. This denudes her of her poisons and keeps her placid. In return, believe me, she has a far nicer life than she'd be enjoying as a brood-daughter in a shiffrey burrow.”

  Alivet wondered about this, but said nothing. She was uncomfortably reminded of the Lords themselves: perhaps they, too, felt that humans had more pleasant lives under their rule than they would have done alone. But this was not a time for social analysis. Despite the salve her cheek felt as though it was about to peel from her face; waves of erratic pain caused her vision to blur.

  “Now,” she heard Ghairen say, “I need to know about the tabernanthe.”

  She said something, but the words made no sense.

  “Alivet? Are you all right?” His voice was sharp with concern.

  “Ghairen?”

  “I'm here, Alivet.”

  She reached out. The high paneled walls darkened as pain pulsed through her. Alivet's head lolled back against the seat; she could not seem to keep it upright.

  “She's poisoned me,” she said. She did not know, now, whether she was talking about Ust or Elaniel.

  “What did you say, Alivet?”

  She echoed her fears, but though she thought she spoke clearly, she could see from the uncomprehending expression on his face that Ghairen had not understood her.

  “You're not making sense, Alivet. Try not to speak. You can tell me later.”

  Alivet nodded. The chill of between-space had long since worn away and she was now feverish and hot. She could think only of poison. A voice said above her, anxiously, “Is she going to be all right?” She thought it was Celana.

  Then Ghairen, speaking calmly enough, but with a hint of panic that she could not remember hearing in his voice before: “I don't know. Bring me the mennenope and the hathrey.”

  Hathrey is a stimulant for the heart, to be used only in cases of terrible illness. It simulates the power of the sun, drawing life into lifelessness. Gilbert's Herbal echoed through her head: the precise, dry voice of her instructor back home in Levanah.

  “And then?”

  She was sitting in front of the examiner; his eyeglasses pushed up onto his forehead as he stared at her. She noted, irrelevantly, that there was a hole in his earlobe where a ring had once been set.

  “Mistress Dee? I asked you a question relating to the properties of mennenope.”

  “It thins the blood,” Alivet said, slowly. “It drives certain toxins from the veins. But it can be dangerous, causing the lungs to falter and fail. It must be used in very small quantities.”

  “Good,” the examiner said, and his face elongated and grew pale. His eyeglasses melted into bony sockets; his eyes were the color of the garnet stones that she had once found along the shore.

  “You've passed the exam,” Ari Ghairen said, and smiled.

  Chapter III

  TOWER OF THE POISONERS, HATHES

  Alivet awoke to find Ghairen sitting by the side of the bed. She stared at him for a moment, wondering where she was and whether she was dreaming, and then she remembered. Ghairen's face had lost its habitual expression of avuncular concern. He looked gaunt and hungry, as though about to take a piece out of her. Her fingers tightened around the sheet, pulling it closer. But when he spoke, he sounded mild enough.

  “How are you feeling, Alivet? Do you feel well enough to talk?”

  “I think so.”

  “I'm sorry to press you so, but I have to know about the tabernanthe. Is it an ally or not?”

  Alivet thought back to the face of the drug: its dark, serene eyes and the way that it had taken her so obligingly out onto the roads of the unconscious. “I think so. Yes. Yes, it's an ally.”

  “And you can persuade it to carry the light that will poison the Lords?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then today we're going home.”

  “Home?” Alivet faltered.

  “To Latent Emanation.” Ghairen stood abruptly, in a rush of robes. “And once we're on the drift-boat, we'll take the tabernanthe up to the solar deck and you must convince it to absorb the rays of the sun, hold it as latent light. This is where it begins, Alivet.”

  The thought of going home was enough to make her throw back the bedclothes and reach for her clothes.

  “I'll leave you to dress,” Ghairen said.

  “No! Wait a moment.” She turned to face him. “Ghairen, listen,” she began, and told him the story of her visit to the alchemist.

  “She said she was healing me, removing the poison that Iraguila said you had given me. But she wasn't, was she? She was poisoning me herself, with the drug of the mayjen.”

  “Iraguila,” Ghairen said, “seems to have been most enterprising.”

  “There's something I need to know, and rather than more plots and schemes, I'm just going to ask. Are you planning to have me killed at the end of all this?”

  The garnet eyes looked straight into her own. Ghairen turned and sat down on the edge of the bed. “No. Why would I?”

  “Because you might want an inconvenient witness out of the way when she had accomplished the task set for her?”

  “I am a murderer, it's true. But I am not gratuitous, Alivet. I reasoned that your sister would be a good enough reason for you to help me.” He hesitated. “Alivet—when the Lords are gone, it isn't death I have in mind to offer you.” He reached out and took her hand between his own.

  “What, then?” Alivet faltered. She leaned a little closer to him.

  “I was going to offer you a job.”

  “I'll think about it,” Alivet said, alarmed by how disappointed she felt. She hoped it was not revealed in her voice as she added briskly, “And I'd appreciate a health check. To make sure that there are no additional poisons in my system.” Like love, she thought, but she was not going to say that aloud.

  An hour of tests later, Ghairen could find nothing.

  “An interesting plan, to implant the mayjen. A spy in your head and a carrier to bring you to Elaniel.” He slipped her sleeve down to cover her arm. Throughout the testing, his touch had been impersonal and sparing, as though he no longer entirely trusted himself in her presence.

  “Why couldn't Iraguila have done that herself?” Alivet asked.

  “I suspect she lacked the skill. The shiffrey shamen have a delicate relationship with the entheogens of this world, which we Hathanassi do not possess. We're much farther from our natural surroundings than you are.”

  “So there's nothing wrong with me?” Alivet asked.

  “Nothing that I can find.” With which Alivet was forced to be content.

  She insisted on saying good-bye to Celana before they left. It was not an easy parting; the girl clasped Alivet's arm with white, desperate fingers.

  “Don't leave me here,” Celana whispered. Her arm was still swathe
d in bandages; she looked small and pale and somehow very reminiscent of Inkirietta.

  “I have to,” Alivet said sadly. “But you'll be safer here. Your father will be with me, after all.”

  “It's not my father I'm afraid of now. It's Iraguila.” The girl's face crumpled. “My father told me what she did to you. I thought she was my friend. But she just used me. Like everyone else.”

  “I haven't been using you, Celana.” As she spoke, Alivet remembered Celana's blood spilling out over the workbench, to make that glittering and unnatural drug. But that had been an accident, and no more of the girl's blood had gone into the mixture. Or had it? Celana was so pale…

  Alivet took a deep breath.

  “Celana—since the accident, your father hasn't hurt you in any way, has he?”

  Celana shook her head.

  “Has he ever actually hurt you? Or—done anything? Touched you in a way that he should not have?” Within the pockets of her skirts, her hands tensed into fists in anticipation of the girl's answer: not just dismay for Celana, but for herself. She could forgive Ghairen for many things, but not for that.

  “No, never.” Celana sounded startled, and mercifully indignant. “It's just that I've always been afraid of him, ever since my mother died. I knew she never loved him, and there were the contract-wives, after he married her.” Celana paused. “She came from one of the music clans. She was so beautiful. She was always playing the kithera and she used to sing, too… Then, when we went to Loviti, she became sick. When Iraguila came here, she told me that it had been my father who had killed her—grown tired of her and wanted her gone. Iraguila said she had been my mother's friend, you see, that she came here to find out what had happened to her. She told me she had found proof of the murder, but that my father's allies were too powerful and we would never succeed in bringing charges. Was all that a lie?”

  “I have no idea. But it doesn't entirely make sense, Celana. Couldn't your father have got a divorce?”