Lilith’s Castle

Gry lay between clean, white sheets beneath a quilt of softest eider down and a coverlet embroidered with rainbows and clouds. The tobacco made her drowsy and her attention wandered, following the long journey she had made from home, and straying on the borders of sleep where the knight dressed all in silver waited to welcome her to his castle.

A gentle, querulous neigh broke into her dreams,

‘I trust you are lying in the lap of luxury, dear Gry?’

‘I am, I am, Red Horse,’ said Gry, laughing.

‘Then sleep safe,’ the Red Horse answered. ‘Goodnight!’

‘Goodnight, dearest Horse.’

She fell asleep in the warm, dark haven of the bed. In the fire-lit room beyond, Darklis’s soul was still snoring, while the witch talked in her sleep,

‘What happened to the Kristnik, I wonder? Where’s Parados, twelfth son of Stanko, the stranger-knight? I’ll give a pound for a penny to any of you, man, mouse or maiden, who’ll tell me. Where has the fellow got to since he disappeared at the Siege of Pargur?’

She is neat and slender-hoofed, thought the Red Horse in the glade; she has a small and pretty head and the hairs of her mane and tail are almost as fine as linen thread; her eye is kind and she smells good, of hay, horse-grease, mare’s-scent. But she is not a Plains horse, not my white Summer, wife and mother of my Red Colt; nor any of my mares; she is not a Plainswoman, not Gry – she is nothing but a dapple-grey pony. However, I shall not stop her from leaning her head so comfortably against my shoulder. In fact I shall return the compliment by resting my head on her neck. His eyes closed and he lifted one hoof up to a tip-tilted position so that, should he slip into the still waters of profound sleep, he would stagger and so wake himself.

When your Intelligence has passed out of the dense forest of delusion, you will become indifferent to all that has been heard and all that is to be heard.’ I have these words from the Sage who begs outside the Temple of the Highest Thought and, having noted and learned them, resolve to use them as text and precept during my sojourn in this hot land of Sind. I shall make them the bread and wine of truth – or rather, since the priests and people here are sparing and ascetic by nature, the dry biscuit and water, the very stuff and staff of life. It would be a great convenience, could I close the doors of my mind on all the perils and trials through which I and my divine Helen have passed and – no small benefit – on the bustle of our gypsy encampment; for it is the driest season, dusty, fruitful, abounding in deep noontide shadow and patches of bare ground too hot for a naked foot to bear. Our people are restless and tired.

To pass from delusion: what does the sage mean, do I want to accept his gift of mental peace? I live by delusion, by sowing and spreading it in the minds of others. Necessarily, my own temple of thought, my inner self, is full of strange creatures and fantastic images. To clear all this away, to prune and then burn as the gardener does when he tends an overgrown tree? To be empty, to be calm? What hard questions.

This afternoon, when I was in my usual perch, the cleft in the mango tree upon which blows the little, warm breeze which seems by contrast cool, I looked lazily down on the heart of the encampment Surely its noise was not unbearable? Fragments floated up to me, a confetti of conversations, both human and animal; a salmagundi of music and song. The oxen were lying dully awake like opium-eaters, and chewing the cud; Mana’s children played with their pet mongoose while she, squatting in the shade, was shaping dough between her flattened hands which she clapped together with a sound like self-applause as the paste began to fall and was caught. Raga sat on the fallen log, tapping his small, round drum while the flies buzzed unheeded about his shaggy head. The boy, Chab, accompanying him on the nose-flute, was so lithe and golden I wished I had carnal inclinations toward the male of our species. On solitary nights, when Helen was abroad with the snakes who are her soul-sisters, I had played with an idea of transforming myself into a sodomite and my redblood masculinity into something fittingly lickerish so that I might seduce and enjoy him. (Temperance, Koschei! Are you not about to make a resolution to quit such excellent diversions, to absolve, to abjure; to try the ascetic’s way?) Laxmi, combing out her night-black hair, reminded me for an instant of my beloved, yet not so exquisite, not so voluptuous despite her curves in their wrappings of shockingly pink cotton, and her bell-hung, chiming rings … (Soon I will be free of such distracting images!) Slender Ravana waved to me and, again, I was tempted and tormented; he had the outward appearance of a woman, bright clothing, kohl-rimmed eyes, red-painted lips and beneath this frippery, a great piece of meat, a male tail almost as long as mine and two mighty testicles. He had been an actor with a travelling theatre before he ran away with we greater vagabonds.

I found myself half-aroused at these sights and thoughts; allowed the thoughts to reorder themselves until the recollection of magnificent Helen overcame them. Then, was I truly aroused – to what purpose? For Helen has gone. I write it again:

‘Helen has gone. ‘Helen has left me.

and again

Eluned va da. Eluned mi da vyda, the language of the dwarves being most suitable for incantations mal or bona. All the languages that are and ever were or will be cannot contain my perturbation, my utter disquiet.

‘For our good. For mine, but yours principally, dear Koschei,’ she assured me as we took our last drink (the sweet juices of the melon and the passion fruit mingled, and a pearl against poison dropped in) together from her Cup. She kissed me on the lips and wiped the sweat from my face with the end of her scarf. I caught the phantom perfume which remained upon it in my nostrils; she had used the last drop long ago but, like its name, Sortilège, Spell, it lingers in the memory and wreaks sensual mischief there.

Helen turned the cup in her hand and sighed. I did not look at her again, being mesmerised by the spinning colours of the Cup, the sky-blue ground, the gold of the graven flames, the crimson and green letters. Words grew from her sighing.

‘Must go – far – you know the Cup is dangerous – you know we are pursued, Koschei – Koschei-i-i-i-i.’

I looked sharply up, in time to see the Cup accelerate, turning now upon a seven-ringed shaft of light, and Helen’s beautiful face above it, rapt. Then it and she vanished like a paper lantern crumpled, like leaves in a storm, and I was left alone to speak my question into the void.

‘Where are you going?’

I listened, while the gypsies’ talk hummed outside the cart, while the mocking jays sang. No answer came.

That was before noon. Hence it was that I sat like a monkey in the tree, hair tousled, body aching for love; and like a man, for I can reason: Helen, knowing my arcane and sensuous nature as well as she does her own and, well understanding how I might yearn, provided for me before she left. She will be away for no longer than one moon, she told me, before we drank our loving cup, or the time it takes for a crawling grub to become a winged and glorious butterfly; long enough, think I.

‘I have left you a gift,’ she had said. ‘Something of myself, you may call it; something I know will please you.’

She has left me Nemione, expertly plucking her senseless body from the great Plane of Delusion where she deposited it near the end of our last adventure and dressing it prettily in the female fashions of Sind – some lengths of more or less transparent, silver-bordered cloth, which go by the names of saree, yashmaq, fascinator &c – and bidding it lie in her place in our bed: for Nemione’s soul is Helen’s and so may my beloved put the pale, matchless Beauty to any use she will.

Nemione, my Lady, fair where Helen’s dark, slender where she has abundance, voiceless where the rich tones of my witch surpass the beauty of the dove’s ‘curroo’, the night owl’s throaty hiss. Oh terrible asceticism, hard master, cold mistress! Must I spurn her? Must I abjure her? I stood up in the fork of the tree, reached out a little way and plucked a rosy-red fruit – so fecund is this little paradise. I tested the mango with my nail, making a shallow fissure from which its yellow juice ran out, and this I sucked, thinking first of absent Helen and then of present Nemione. (Perhaps my mind seeks the ascetic’s way because I have excess of pleasures? I cannot believe it.) Decided for the time being, I climbed down and ran to my waggon, eager to share the fruit with Nemione.

Inviolate Nemione! Entire creature, unravished maid!

The curtains were closed beneath the tilt and I lifted a comer of the nearest to expose Nemione to my gaze. She was asleep, her snow-white skin flushed with the heat or from desire, perhaps, and she was sweating gently so that the womanly smell mingled with her jasmine perfume. Scenting her, I became excited and I dropped the mango in the dirt. Then, it was a moment’s work to mount into the cart and, straddling the sleeping virgin while I uncovered myself, mount her. She woke as I drove into her; Nemione woke and smiled, who in Malthassa was cold to me as snow and ice, as the everlasting Altaish mountains themselves. I paused a moment in my exertions to put some words into her mouth, that she might speak and, ‘Lord Koschei,’ she whispered, her voice rasping with emotion and desire. It brought me to the brink and I erupted within her, a volcano released.

The first time is the last, I thought.

I looked down on Nemione, enjoying her transports, feeling her intimate grip and release as she sank panting in her own waking dream; and wondered, as we subsided together in the bed and lay close-twined, whether she could keep my seed and conceive of it. She was a toy; but she was flesh and blood and her blood stained my Parts, evidence of her chastity when she was a she-mage in our own country and proud proof I was the first to take her.

‘Could you carry and bear my child?’ I asked her, forgetting; of course, she answered nothing, being not only voiceless but senseless as far as mental matters go, and I heard Helen laugh in my mind, a ribald echo. Such a fancy would please her keen, malicious mind. The sounds of the encampment broke over me, pushing away the passing moment, demanding to be heard. I kissed Nemione on her parted lips and tasted her patchouli-scented breath.

‘Say “Whatever you will, dear lord. I am here to worship and serve you alone, potent Archmage, king of my heart,” I whispered and pushed the words into her mouth with my tongue.

‘Whatever you will, dear lord. I am here to worship and serve you alone, potent Archmage, king of my heart,’ Nemione breathed, her lash-fringed gaze the colour of an indolent, afternoon sea.

“Sleep,” I bade her, ‘until I have need of you.’

She slipped from beneath me then and, turning her back, fell deeply asleep. Solitary again, I adjusted my clothing (the loose cotton trousers they call shulwars, nothing more), lifted one of the starry curtains which made the walls of our travelling house, and picked up a mirror, a common one, for grooming and vanities, no magic there – unless it was in the face reflected. My face, browned by the sun and the wind, blue-eyed; thatched with thick, greying hair in which still glittered many strands of yellow, a corn-colour; clean shaven. His face, browned by the sun and the wind, blue-eyed; thatched with thick, greying hair in which still glittered many strands of yellow, a corn-colour; clean shaven.

The even-contoured face, confident of life, its beauty enhanced by wisdom and the years, looked at me, Koschei Corbillion. Once, it belonged to Guy Parados. He’s good as dead, lost in my world of Malthassa while I, in his, can do whatever I will, can travel as now I do, can live and love where I choose, can journey to his native country and claim all that is his.

When I last saw Parados, he had taken over the body of a horse and was using it for his so-called noble ends –

’Tis pity there’s no notation in this alphabet for laughter.

We wise men of Malthassa think little of changing one body for another. It is from this, I think, my new ideas spring; for the sage of Highest Thought also taught me that by following his Way, any can become what is ordained be it dog, ape, or prince; and this notion, I wish to explore. My hunger for knowledge exceeds my lust by many a degree. Besides, it is written in the Twofold Scripture that the priest and the mage are one and the same and I suspect that he of the Temple is a deep magician.

These thoughts, which I now record, were mine while I regarded the face in the mirror. I put it down to look at sleeping Nemione. Asmodeus, she was beautiful, a perfection of soft colour and form!

‘Snare!’ I said, ‘Delusion!’

But I could not forbear kissing her – thrice – in farewell.

So I went out into the evening. The sun had set and the heat his fires wake in the earth had receded to a gentle warmth. Fireflies and night birds were abroad. I stepped over the dry moat which divides the encampment from my garden, a magic garden I had made to surround the little annexe to my Memory Palace left in far Malthassa and in which I stored my most tender and amazing memories. It had taken seven nights to erect to my satisfaction, to decorate: a pretty thing, carved and ornamented in the style of this country yet cool and elegant, white as milk. I approached it through the garden, ducking under the branches of the flowering siris trees and passing the lake where the black swans and gold-winged divers swam. I paused to inhale the perfume of the night.

It was dark when I stood before my little building, if dark it can be when the skies are encrusted with jewels, and I went gladly in at one of its arched entrances and sat with crossed legs on the floor. It is the posture the sage uses when he exercises his body and mind to meditate and I had practised it until I was perfect. Such suppleness is the reward of discipline and I had my body well-attuned. I would begin work on my mind.

First, to clear it, I repeated the mantra the sage had given me and which I can record here in the secrecy of mind and journal. ‘Jaa’ it is, meaningless to me but, I know, a noise like that of the thunder and with an echo in my mind or the mind of this body which I cannot locate.

Jaa! No room in my mind for thought. Jaa! No room for hunger. Jaa! No room for desire. Jaa! Here is the engine of the body, pulsing, breathing.

I heard nothing but these, the sounds of life, and the near world fell away from me. I opened my eyes: the building had gone, the trees which surround it, the stars, the night. I sat in an empty place where a redness glowed. Sense of distance, sense of time: they had gone, but somewhere, maybe before me or to one side, I saw a rise in the ground and something indistinct upon it. I thought I was on the Plane of Delusion and blinked to clear my vision. The place glowed, red as the fire of a volcano. My eyes closed, opened. I was back in the annexe and the stars were visible, sparkling gladly beyond the arches.

I was glad, to be back, to have travelled; but I wondered, where? I took my journal from its place on the shelf beside the statue of Cyllene and wrote in it. At the end of the passage I drew a neat line and a sigil of protection, breathed upon that and replaced the volume. My hand, as I withdrew it from the shelf, knocked against something, the corner of a picture which had not been there before. I stared at it: I had no knowledge of it, had not conjured it; yet there it hung, framed in dark red mulberry wood and glazed with fine, clear glass. It was a portrait in oils and I recognised the sitter, Gry of the Plains, Nandje’s daughter, or to put it in the hyperbolic, Ima style: the picture was a likeness of the Princess of Horses, Gry, Daughter of He Who Bestrides the Red Horse, the Rider, the Imandi. The woman looked serenely at me, dark eyes limpid – beautiful eyes! – her two plaits of hair bound with silver wire at the ends and silver in abundance, worked and engraved rings of it, on her bare arms and one, which had a cunning bone clasp fashioned to look like the tail of a horse, about her left ankle where the hem of her blue dress hung down.

Parados has done this, I thought. He intruded into my Memory Palace and now he is hanging his memories in my annexe. Yet I could not see how he gained entrance.

The rolling green Plains made the background in this pretty intrusion, hills and hillocks under the grass, some of them the dwelling-places of the Ima who burrow in the ground as if they were marmots or moles. The sky above the woman’s head was clear and light. That is all, a plain composition truly yet a skilful one for it showed Gry as she is, untouchable and incorruptible, a true daughter of the Horse.