Elizabeth Hand - Winterlong

Before he could respond I fled beneath the arch, Anku darting to follow me. My heart pounded so that I feared I might stop breathing, so painful was that ceaseless hammering inside my chest. But after a few steps the air felt clearer, flensed of smoke and scent and sound. I breathed deeply, until I felt as though a ponderous weight had been lifted from within my lungs, and looked around to see that I had entered one of the branching hallways that snaked through the first level of High Brazil. There was a low murmur as of many voices, but I could see no one. Tiny electrified candles glimmered from brackets set behind translucent petals of jadeite and peridot. These cast pale green shadows upon the alabaster floor and walls, a marine glow that soothed me yet made me feel more alert, as though the beryl light revealed shapes and designs normally hidden from sight. Cool draughts flowed from unseen air shafts. To either side were many narrow doorways. Each was surmounted by a scholiast in the likeness of a gynander with brightly colored phallus in place of a tongue, and breasts whose nipples were ocular sensors that rotated as they focused upon me. We passed doors of scented wood inlaid with plasma crystals and heated copper coils exhaling the narcotic haze of veronal. Doors of prismatic glass cast back not my face but the holographic images of other Paphians, their fingers tracing the outlines of painted lips and eyes and genitals as over and over they beckoned unseen guests. There were doors of interlocking metal gears that snapped and spun ceaselessly, allowing only glimpses into the twilit seraglios beyond, where sultry figures swayed. As I approached each room its scholiast would click and whir, the gaudy phallus unfurl as the automaton turned to fix me with its hollow eyes and pipe in a pure breathy voice:

“ Welcome cousin. This is the Chamber of Equivocal Purity.”

“ Welcome sisters. Inside sleeps the Ensiform Concilia-trix: rouse her to battle with your embrace.”

“ Welcome cousins. The Adytum Intrigant is engaged for the Spados’ Private Bath.”

“ Welcome cousins. Step carefully into the First Elevation of the Entresol of Unctuous Sighs.”

Anku ignored this prattling, pausing only to sniff at the postern whose scholiast murmured, “ Welcome cousins. Circe High Brazil awaits within to change women into swans, men into swine.” Faint grunts and moans of pleasure seeped from beneath a door scaled with the hides of many pangolins. The freshly flayed pelt of a young lamb hung from the doorjamb, blood slicking the marble beneath it. Anku leaped to tug at this. I cuffed him and hissed for him to follow. He did so with a disapproving growl, slinking at my heels.

“ Welcome errant brothers. Join us in the Chamber of Lashes and Gentle Lapidation.”

“ Welcome rhapsodists. Retire to the couches of the Anodyne Cubicle.”

“ Welcome cousin. The Exiguous Hagioscopic Chamber is engaged for Dolorous Palpation.”

The scholiast’s phallic tongue retracted into its mouth with a click. To each side of the automaton rose slender windows of glass: glowing purple, deep scarlet, jonquil yellow. Archaic figures were depicted within the panes. For several minutes I studied these curious representations of men and women, shining vehicles, and slender aviettes. Anku sat at my feet as I pondered how to enter the chamber.

From inside came a sudden soft explosion of laughter; then muffled voices.

“Roland,” I whispered. Memory of the day’s terrors faded. I felt honed to a spike of raw feeling, suddenly knowing exactly where I was, and why; and what I hunted. When I moved my hand a spidery glint of violet crept from beneath my fingers. Anku whined.

“I would enter the Exiguous Hagioscopic Chamber,” I announced to the scholiast. I gazed up at it fearlessly.

The ocular sensors extruded. Squinting, I could see the array of lenses inside the metal nipples circle and reverse as they sought to focus upon me, the pinpoint of light that revealed the periscopic aperture within the mechanism. The phallic tongue unfolded, flecking the air with metallic dust.

“ The chamber has been engaged for private excruciations, ” the hollow voice intoned.

“I am an expected guest of the Curator Roland Nopcsa and Whitlock High Brazil.” I glanced at Anku. The scholiast’s sensors shifted to regard him. The voices inside the chamber grew louder, as though arguing, then silent. “This animal is a gift for Roland Nopcsa.”

Loud whirring from the scholiast. The cool air pouring from the air vents made me shiver, so I moved from the wall. The sensors followed me.

“ Whitlock High Brazil and Roland Nopcsa have requested no assistance for the evening’s excruciations. The chamber may not be engaged.”

“I do not wish to engage the chamber!” I said. “I bring a gift for Roland Nop—”

“ The chamber may not be engaged.”

“But this—”

The scholiast’s jeweled navel suddenly dilated. I shut up and backed across the hall and to one side, kicking at Anku to alert him. From the scholiast shot a needle that sprayed the air with a fine mist. Anku whined. I covered my mouth with my sleeve to avoid breathing the sedative essence.

The needle retracted. The painted breasts swiveled. The phallus furled back into the cold steel mouth. Before the sensors could focus upon me again I slammed against the door. It swung inward as easily as the postern to my room at the House Miramar. I felt Anku’s soft fur against my legs as he slipped beside me and the door shut behind us.

“MAGDALENE,” SOMEONE WHISPERED. THE sound was magnified in the bell of a vast chamber that seemed to encompass all of High Brazil. I stood surrounded by shafts of violently tinted light: orange, violet, turquoise, burgundy columns rising to explode against a ceiling of brilliant stained glass. The far end of the chamber appeared to open above the Great Hall, where masquers reeled and shouted in eerie silence, heedless of us watching from the seraglio above. I gathered that this chamber was located directly behind the wall of prismatic glass that overlooked the east end of the Great Hall. I shut my eyes to blot out the sense of vertiginous space in a room that I knew could not possibly be this huge. When I looked up again it was into the face of Roland Nopcsa regarding me with muzzy brown eyes.

“Raphael?” he said thickly. “‘Sat you?” He pawed at the air. I stepped backward, lost my balance, and fell onto a pallet heaped with satin coverlets and the remnants of a feathered costume.

“Raphael!” exclaimed the voice I’d first heard upon entering. “Magdalene save me, I’m glad you’re here! He’s a madman.” From the tangle of bolsters and sheets a figure half-rose to greet me. Slender, with skin so translucent it shimmered with the pulse of blood in his veins, blue-green and violet. The marks of bruising kisses lingered upon his shoulders and throat.

“Oh, Whitlock!” Ignoring Roland, I crawled to where, Whitlock hugged a pillow to his frail chest. “What happened to you?”

He dropped the pillow and wrapped his arms around me, cool and insubstantial as a wraith’s. He blinked often as he spoke, those weak lovely eyes always seeming to focus on someone else, slightly to my left.

“He’s shattered my poor splendid wings,” he said, laughing. Dabs of silver arched across each cheekbone where bijoux tears had been artfully wrung. I kissed him, recalling our pairing at Winterlong: my auburn locks braided with his shining hair. He looked no less lovely now for his bruises and disarray, only achingly fragile.

“S’ dog?” rumbled Roland, staggering as he waved his arms toward Anku. “S’ dog, Whitlock.”