Slowly, she led the wraiths up the long, straight stair to the small, ornately fashioned door. It stood fast shut—she had never seen it open—but when she lifted the latch, it gave inward, swung open. Aeriel hesitated a long moment, then led the wraiths inside.
The outer chambers were spacious and, to her great surprise after living so long in the vast, deserted keep, fully furnished with stools and tables, cushions, curtains, cabinets, and shelves. She and the wraiths passed through or beside sitting rooms, servants'
quarters, a tiled bath, a study. Aeriel found herself admiring the mosaic inlay of subtle-hued soapstone and the pillars of smooth, colored marble.
They came to the suite's inner chamber last, and it seemed very small in comparison.
Long curtains fell beside columns partitioning the room proper from the broad outside terrace. The bed was small, but carved of some dark, rare wood, and richly canopied.
At the foot of the bed lay a chest such as one might store clothes or linens in, but as she drew near to it, Aeriel saw it must be a toychest, for on its inlaid lid rested two playthings only a princeling might have: a dragon carved of ivory, with claws of black onyx, and a rag doll of costly satins and velvets, sewn with pearls.
As she set the chalice down beside the playthings on the chest, it occurred to Aeriel that this must have been a child's room before the dark-angel came. It puzzled her that nothing in the room had been disturbed, nothing taken by the queen and her people, when they had removed to Esternesse.
The dusk-lit room went suddenly dark. Aeriel started, turned, realized even as she did so that it was only Solstar having set. She went to turn up the oil lamps that burned low in niches in the walls. The wraiths milling about the room turned their blind eyes from the light. As Aeriel brightened the final lamp, one of the wasted women halted.
"He is coming!" hissed the wraith.
The others stopped. Aeriel stopped. She dropped her hand from the lamp, padded swiftly to the center of the room. She stood, arms folded across her breast, listening. The silence of the great deserted keep strained against her ears. Then above the soft hissing of the lampwicks' burning, she caught sound of something: uneven footfalls moving across the great hall outside, the rustle of many wings.
"Quick." Aeriel gestured to the wraiths, her voice a tight whisper, lest he hear. "Hide yourselves."
The starved women melted into the shadows and the dim places of the room, became motionless, invisible. Aeriel lifted the horse's hoof and held it cupped in her hands.
The footsteps drew nearer across the hall. She heard the darkangel ascending the long, straight stair, crossing through the outer chambers. Aeriel tried to steady her trembling hands. She stood facing the doorway. The soft white lamplight played pale shadows across the walls. The vampyre's halt step stalked nearer, nearer. Aeriel closed her eyes and held her breath.
The footfalls ceased. Aeriel opened her eyes. The icarus stood in the doorway before her.
His deep black pinions, save for the one, fell like a mantle from his shoulders. His colorless eyes looked her up and down, once.
"Well, wife," he said. The long rends in his face and shoulder gaped. "You are very beautiful, almost worthy of me." Aeriel drew a long, shuddering breath at the sight of him. The vam-pyre smiled. "You tremble—are you cold? Soon you will not mind the cold."
He left the doorway and came toward her. Aeriel clutched the silver hoof.
"What is that?" he said.
Aeriel glanced at the vessel in her hand. She spoke and tried to keep her voice steady. "It is the custom of my people to drink a bridal cup."
He laughed. "A quaint custom. I had not heard of it." He settled back, arms folded, eyeing the cup in her hands. "But we are not among your people now."
Aeriel gazed at him, felt her blood quicken. "But," she stammered, "you must drink."
"And why is that?" the vampyre inquired.
Fear welled up to drown her thoughts. She searched desperately for some persuasion, felt the blade of the hidden dagger burning upon her breast. "It would please me," she began,
"for you to drink...."
The icarus' arms unfolded. His hands went to his hips. "And why should I suffer to do anything at all that pleases you?" he scoffed, sharp-edged annoyance creeping into his voice. "I am the master here."
A notion surfaced; Aeriel let out her breath.
Her blood returned. A lump of relief rose in her throat. She schooled her voice to be forceful and clear. "If you do not drink, husband-to-be, we will not be truly wed. Then you will have not fourteen brides, but only twelve-and-one." The vampyre snorted, pursed his lips in scorn. "Come, it is a small concession," she pressed. "Why quibble?"
The icarus dropped his hands from his hips suddenly and laughed, a dark and irritated laugh. "Very well," he snapped. "Let us drink, wench, since you are so adamant. I will have my own way in all things soon enough." He held out his hand. "Give me the cup."
But Aeriel had already raised the vessel to her own lips. The dram smelled faintly of almond milk. She sipped; the drink was warmer than liquor and cooler than mint, the taste strong and bittersweet, like homflowers, but much deeper. Its warmth spread through her body. She felt suddenly stronger, more awake and more alive. The lamps about the chamber seemed to burn brighter against the dark. She held out the hoof of the starhorse to the icarus. He took it in his hand and laughed again.
"A curious vessel," he remarked, frowning. "It reminds me of... of..."
Aeriel felt her veins constrict. She knew she must say something, lest he grow wary.
"We... we borrowed the tradition from the plains."
The vampyre shrugged, ignoring her. "I cannot think what," he finished, raised the silver hoof to his lips and downed its contents in a draught. Aeriel watched him, and dared not breathe. He smiled at her and laid the cup aside.
"Now we are wed," he said. "What was the dram—wine of some tree you found fruiting in the garden?"
Aeriel shook her head. "Nothing fruits in your garden."
"Oh?" he said, not greatly interested. His eyes devoured her. "What was it, then?"
"I don't know," said Aeriel. Unease crouched between her shoulder blades. Why did he not fall?—did he not feel the liquor's heat? She had felt its burning warmth at once, still felt it. Aeriel fell back a step as the darkangel advanced.
He stopped, seemingly amused at her retreat. "What do you mean?" he asked, toying with the leaden vials at his throat. Aeriel eyed his lean, white fingers, imagined their strength: fingers that snapped bats' bones and tore out lizards' tongues, throttled his brides to death that he might drink off their blood, steal away their souls, and tear out their hearts for the gargoyles. Aeriel felt faint.
"Surely it was some fruit of my garden," he said.
She held him off with her eyes, felt herself growing desperate. He was no weaker—
seemed if anything stronger than before. A slow panic crept over her. The duarough had been mistaken. The darkangel was invincible. No poison could touch him. He was frowning slightly now, since she did not answer.
"The duarough gave it to me," she said; she could not think of any lie.
The vampyre looked at her, uncomprehending. "Who—?" he started, but stopped short.
His skin, always before so translucent fair, went suddenly waxy. He laid a hand on his throat and swallowed hard. His wings, no longer folded, poised tensely, like a dozen hawks ready to stoop. His frown deepened; his lips tightened into a grimace. Then he wrapped his arms about his middle with a cry.
"Poison. You have poisoned me—ah! I burn!"
He sank down on one knee, his face twisted in pain. Aeriel shrank back from him, appalled. She had not known it would be like this. The duarough had never told her the potion would bring him pain. She had imagined he would fall insensate at the first sip.
The darkangel's head jerked up; the leaden necklace clinked, and she saw his eyes—wild and bright.
"After the great honor I have done you," he cried hoarsely, "choosing you first as my servant, now as my wife—this is your repayment?"
He gasped and twisted, clutching his waist. His face contorted as in agony. Aeriel pressed her hands over her mouth to keep from screaming.
"I am on fire," he said through clenched teeth, panting with the effort. "You have killed me— but you'll not live to celebrate it."
He struggled to his feet, his dark wings thrashing wildly. Their wind stirred the gauze hangings, flattened her sari's folds against her body, made the oil lamps gutter. But for all their desperate fury, they could scarcely help him rise. He clutched at the bed-curtain, reached out his free hand toward Aeriel, leaned forward to enfold her in his wings.
She shrank away from him, threw up her arm to keep him away. One cold-biting hand of the icarus closed over her wrist. Aeriel heard herself scream as he dragged her toward him. She snatched at the dagger hidden in her gown, but before she could draw it, the wraiths appeared.
Swiftly, silently, they fleeted from the shadows, the folds of the bed-curtains, the seams of the walls. The icarus' hand went suddenly limp; Aeriel saw him start. She slipped free of him as the wraiths surrounded him, stood ringed about him, keeping him from Aeriel.
The vampyre cried out at the sight of them, threw up his arms as if to ward them away.
"What are you doing here, my wives?" he cried. "You are so hideous to look at. Keep off!"
The wraiths drifted in a slow circle around him. "We will not keep off," they said. "You have chosen us, and we are yours."
"Why are you so ugly?" he wailed. "Why do you torment me? Why are all my wives so ugly?" His strength was slipping from him now. His wings ceased their buffeting. He sank slowly to his knees.
"Stolen our souls," said the wasted women. "What could we have become but hideous?"
"Drunk off our blood," another one said, "but left us just wit enough to suffer in our fate—. horrible suffering."
"Traitors," the icarus gasped. "I favored you above all others."
"Torn out our hearts," the wraith-women hissed. "See what your 'favor' has brought us to.
Liar."
"Pillager."
"Murderer."
"Thief."
The vampyre leaned upon one hand now. The other one clutched his side. As he stared at the faces of the withered creatures stepping slowly past him, Aeriel saw a last gleam of defiance light his eye. "What does it matter?" he whispered, his breath faint and harsh.
"What could any of your worthless lives matter? I am the darkangel, a thousand thousand times above you. I shall rule this world—" His ranting whisper weakened further. "My mother has promised me..."
"Never," answered his wives, and silenced him.
The vampyre sagged, slumped forward to the floor. Aeriel watched through the circling wraiths. If he protested still, she could no longer hear him. He struggled feebly for a moment on his side, then with a jerk, rolled over onto his back. His wings crumpled beneath him. His rigid frame relaxed. Aeriel found herself clutching her own throat as his gasps grew fainter. His head turned from side to side, and was still. His colorless eyes closed slowly, opened. He heaved a deep, shuddering sigh. His eyelids slid shut then and did not open again.
He was breathing only very lightly now. He was not dead. Aeriel felt all of her energy draining from her. She sank down very slowly and leaned back against the cold, wet stone of the wall. The blade adamant lay hot and sharp against her beneath the fabric of her gown. She felt the fine metal chain pressing into her neck. She did not look at the fallen darkangel. She did not want to see him. Aeriel closed her eyes for a long moment to rest.
When aeriel opened her eyes, all was as it had been a few moments before. The icarus lay pale and still on his crumpled black wings. The thirteen wraiths stood wan and motionless around him. Aeriel arose at last and walked past them to the vampyre. She knelt beside him and unfastened the necklace from his throat.
His flesh was colorless and cold as death. Her hands were shaking. At first she feared to see him rot and fall to ashes at her touch, but he breathed on. And then she fully expected him to awake from feigned sleep and strangle her, but he did not stir. She lifted the leaden chain in her hand and unhooked the first vial from its link.
She turned and held it up. "Whose soul is this?" she asked.
One of the wraiths came forward—perhaps the most bent and wasted of them. "It is mine," she said, her voice so thin it sounded like little more than wind. "You must help me."
The wraith's emaciated fingers closed about Aeriel's hand. She helped the creature raise the leaden vessel to her lipless mouth and drink. For such a tiny vial, it seemed she drank a very long time. When she was done, the wraith stepped back, but she was no longer a wraith. She now had eyes where only hollows had been, and though her body was as starved and fleshless as before, there was now an energy about it, almost a glow.
"My name is Marrea," said the creature who no longer was a wraith. Her voice was soft and full, very beautiful. "I was a daughter of a goose-herd in the forested hills of Bern. I was tending my flocks in the meadows one morning when the darkangel seized me."
Then before she had quite spoken the last of it, her body fell away into dust; her bones crumbled and settled in a heap—yet still she stood there before Aeriel. Or rather, it was another being that stood in her place, a being made of a soft yellow light that retained a human shape. The shift Aeriel had woven for her draped softly about her, but the outline of her form shone faintly through. She looked to Aeriel like a beautiful young woman.
"See me as I was before," the spirit said. "Now that you have given me back my soul, I have no more use for my body. My heart and my lifeblood are gone irreplaceably: I am no longer of this world, so I must leave body behind. But this"— she touched her kirtle—
"which you have given me, I will retain, for love is immortal, and eternal, and will not wither in the endless deeps of heaven."