Thorn Boy and Other Dreams of Dark Desire (19 page)

Jadrin went
alone to the king’s bedchamber and drew all the drapes against the
balmy evening. He lit pungent incense on a brass saucer and robed
himself in white and let down his hair. From the velvet bag, he
withdrew the two halves of the lilac quartz and laid them on a
table next to the smoking incense. It lay like two halves of a
broken egg, glowing inside, reflecting the light of the smouldering
charcoal upon which burned the perfume. Jadrin stared at it for
some time. Then, he sat down on the bed, calmed his mind and called
to the aethers. Within seconds, the baleful spirit appeared at the
window. It appeared to be a little confused. ‘Let me in Jadrin,’ it
said.

After a pause,
the boy arose and opened the window.

‘
It is
time, Jadrin.’

‘
Indeed
it is.’

‘
If only
you’d had true magic, eh?’

‘
If
only!’ Jadrin agreed.

‘
Well, I
must give you the chance, I suppose. Have you thought of my
name?’

‘
I have
pondered it deeply,’ Jadrin said. ‘Would it be...
Grizelda?’

‘
No.’

‘
Nanune,
Riboflax, Tanteberry, Archimund?’

‘
No, no,
no!’ The spirit flickered with delight. Jadrin patiently recited
every name, both male and female, that he could think of. All the
while, the spirit glittered and spat light and laughed.

‘
No,’ it
said, ‘none of those. You have just one more try. Your time has run
out.’

Ah,’ said
Jadrin, ‘in that case, would you, by any chance, be the shade of
Angeline Hope DeVanceron, dead queen of Ashbrilim?’

At these
words, the spirit shrieked wordlessly in horror, manifesting itself
more definitely into the form of a gaunt, bedraggled woman, clothed
in the rags of a shroud, with terrible, staring eyes. ‘Sorcerer!’
she shrieked.

‘
I am
learning,’ Jadrin said mildly. ‘Be at peace, Angeline. You are free
of flesh, so be free of pain. Why carry it with you?
Fly!’

‘
Never!
I must have my revenge, for my broken body, my broken
spirit!’

‘
Broken
long before you became queen,’ Jadrin said. ‘Be healed, Angeline.
Fly!’

The spirit
uttered a horrifying squawk and flew at Jadrin, spectral claws
reaching for his face. Jadrin stepped back swiftly and picked up
the broken halves of the quartz. ‘If the earth cannot contain you
maybe stone can!’ he said and, reciting a spell that the witch at
the roadside had sold him, he issued an Irrefutable Order that the
spirit of the dead queen could not ignore or fight. She was sucked
like smoke into the quartz, whereupon Jadrin snapped the two halves
together. They sealed in an instant as if they had never been
apart. For a few moments, the quartz glowed as if it contained a
small flame within its heart, but by the time Ashalan came through
the door curtains, it lay innocent and cool upon the table.

The next
morning, Jadrin took the quartz and buried it deep beneath the
garden of the palace. Over its grave, he planted three creepers of
ivy to bind it into the ground. He surrounded it with scented
flowers, and called upon the spirits of the earth to heal the
essence of Angeline. In time, he hoped, when all that was dark had
left her tortured soul, she would seep through the stone as a
radiant light and soar to the celestial realm.He could do no more.
But whether his actions in this regard were successful or not, the
spirit of Angeline never bothered him, or Ashalan, again. But there
is no doubt that what Jadrin did upon that night changed him
forever. He took a little of Angeline’s darkness into his
being.

The Nothing
Child

This story and
the one after it carry on directly from ‘Spinning for Gold’, and
retell a lesser-known Scottish fairy tale, ‘Nicht Nought Nothing’.
It illustrates how magic takes the path of least resistance and you
should be very careful indeed when making deals with supernatural
beings, especially in the choice of words used to make the
deal.

As he grows older, Jadrin becomes a distinctly darker
character, which to me made him more interesting. When I wrote this
piece, my fascination with capricious angels was already in full
flight, and Lailahel, the angel of conception, is a precursor to
the fallen angels of my Grigori trilogy
.

Jadrin,
consort of the King of Cos, desired a son. He pondered long hours
upon this vain hope, sitting among the dappled shadows on the
palace terrace, pacing the marble stairs, watching the stars from
pointed windows. Between them, it was impossible for two beings of
masculine physical aspect to conceive life, but neither was Jadrin
composed to commit some sordid infidelity with a woman. As for
encouraging Ashalan to do so, this was beyond him, beyond the hot,
possessive passion of his love. There seemed no solution to his
problem, yet the yearning would not leave him. He watched the
palace women with their children. Perhaps he could sate this
uncontrollable and inexplicable longing by adopting somebody else’s
offspring? He considered this idea and then put it aside. No, it
was a child of the flesh that he wanted. Nothing else would do. So
obssessed was Jadrin with this desire that others came to notice a
dark and poisonous aura about him, violet with the intensity of his
feelings. It was mentioned to the king in careful terms. Was Jadrin
perhaps not quite in the full flower of health?

Ashalan
questioned him, at first tenderly, then sharply, fearing some other
reason for the change in behaviour.

Jadrin was
reluctant to speak his thoughts aloud; surely the king would think
him mad. His excuses only fuelled Ashalan’s suspicions. An argument
ensued. Fleeing from hostile words, Jadrin ran blindly from the
more inhabited areas of the palace. When his anger had left him and
his breath, clutching furiously in his chest, forced him to pause
and rest, he found himself amongst a clutter of abandoned
buildings, far from the rich apartments he was used to. Curiosity
at his surroundings chased the bitter words with Ashalan from his
mind. Entranced, Jadrin began to explore. Some of the doorways had
been boarded up, others left open to the elements, so that the
winds had scoured the buildings barren. Naturally, it was the
boarded entrances that interested him most. Especially that of a
structure embellished with weathered, stone fetishes. Tearing the
boards from their rusty nails, Jadrin forced an entrance into the
building. All was dark inside, dark and silent. Jadrin’s flesh
prickled with excitement. ‘This,’ he thought, ‘this is a place trod
by other than mortal feet.’ He was right. And, as in the tradition
of magical tales, it was within that place he found a great, old
book...

That evening,
the court noticed a change in Jadrin. He seemed more like his old
self. Not everyone present at dinner was gratified to see he and
Ashalan seemed to have settled their differences, but on the whole,
the atmosphere was one of relief. Jadrin smiled secretively into
his purple wine. Ashalan watched him carefully, mollified by
Jadrin’s apologies, but still wary. He had seen this strange and
guarded smile on Jadrin’s face before. It spoke of power, the kind
of which Ashalan had only a cursory grasp. It made him feel as if
he was sitting next to a total stranger, and someone not entirely
human. It made him afraid.

Unbeknown to
the king, on the night of the next full moon, Jadrin robed himself
in black cloth and flowed like a vapour through the midnight
gardens of the palace. He sought out a sylvan grotto, decorated
with tumbled stones, that had been designed to resemble an ancient
temple, artfully strung with trailing arms of ivy and convolvulus.
Pale, glowing blooms exuded a secret, aching perfume into the moist
darkness and above the cracked and mossy stones of the garden, the
moon swam, pregnant with light, in a smooth, velvet sky, sequinned
with stars. Jadrin felt energy course through the fibres of his
flesh.He stood upon the stones and raised his arms to the moon. The
cloth fell from his back and he was an aloof and dignified courtier
no longer, but a witch-boy, the creature of his childhood, he that
sang the water spirits from their gnat-gauzed homes: Jadrin, as
white and deadly as the hottest of consuming flames.

He conjured
forth a rare and capricious angel, whose hair burned the moss at
his feet, whose eyes were pale as milk, as if blind. Jadrin had
memorised an ancient invocation from the old book he had found.
Some of the words made his teeth ache, some made his tongue stumble
and become thick in his mouth, but he persisted. The angel swayed,
sometimes fading a little as if to reprimand the boy when his words
slipped.

‘
Lailahel, angel of the night, prince of conception, I
implore you...’

‘
Implore
me, nothing,’ the spirit interrupted. ‘You desire a child, yet you
know this cannot be under the sway of the laws of the earth mother.
You are male, Jadrin; your lover is male. There can be no issue
from your union. This you know.’

‘
This I
know!’ Jadrin answered defiantly. ‘Yet I have summoned you,
Lailahel; your power can facilitate my need. You would not have
come otherwise.’

The spirit
shimmered - a vagueness that could have signified amusement or
displeasure. ‘I have been called on pale, cold moon-nights by the
fairest and most ill-favoured, youngest and oldest of women, yet
never, in my experience, have I been summoned by a boy! Maybe I can
ease your difficulties, but the Goddess will not be pleased. You
risk needling her wrath.’

‘
My
Prince, I work magic, thus do I understand I must take
responsibility for my actions. Make it happen. The child will be
consecrated to the Goddess as soon as it is named.’

‘
It will
not be a normal child, Lord Jadrin.’

‘
What
is? I ask only for its body to be fair, its face to be the mirror
of the moon, its mind to be swift and canny as the hounds of the
Maiden.’

‘
So
little specification?’ The angel laughed; a sound both musical and
sepulchral. ‘Very well. I shall instruct you in what to
do.’

Jadrin bowed
deeply. ‘I thank you, Lailahel.’ He raised his head. ‘So what is
your price?’

The angel
smiled. ‘My price? By the Heavenly Spheres and all their Motes,
dare I ask a price for such a boon? My price is this: nothing. I
want nothing from you, Lord Jadrin.’

Jadrin
frowned. ‘Forgive me, but this is not the usual way.’

‘
Nevertheless, it is what I ask.’

‘
At
least permit me to light a temple candle in your name and blend a
sacred incense to be burned for the next three nights.’

The angel
shrugged. ‘If such fripperies appease you, then by no means let me
prevent you from realising them. If I should ask for anything, I
should ask for your silence, but, as I said, I ask for
nothing.’

‘
You
have my silence anyway. You may also have my blood, if you
wish.’

The angel
shook its radiant head, causing the cascade of hair to wave like
weed under water. ‘No need. I want nothing from you.’

Jadrin could
not help but feel uneasy. He understood that there is always a
price for everything and he had been fooled by sly spirits before.
However, the intensity of his desire forced him to ignore any
misgivings in his heart.

He knelt upon
the stones and Lailahel, prince of conception, whispered
instructions as to what he must do.

The moon fell
to her rest and Jadrin hurried back, like a shadow, insubstantial
and furtive, to the palace and his king.

On the night
of the first crescent of the waxing moon, the Maiden’s time, Jadrin
bathed himself in salt water. Emerging, dripping and stinging, from
the pool, he stood in the unlit bathroom of hollow echoes and slick
water sounds, gazing towards the skylight, where hasty clouds
muffled the stars. He closed his eyes and quickly, with a knife as
sharp as a blade can be, cut the pale skin of his breast above the
heart. Blood rilled eagerly over his fingers as he pressed the
wound. Shaking, he knelt and lifted a silver chalice, catching a
measure of the dark, warm liquid in the bowl. Inky, diluted streams
ran down his body into his wet footprints. Perhaps he had cut too
deep. He had not expected so much blood from a wound in that place.
The air was still, watching. Magic, then. Magic. He hurried from
the room, not even bothering to cover himself with a robe or towel.
By the time he reached his dressing room, the wound had dried.

Ashalan slept
on his back in the huge, canopied bed. Jadrin paused to regard him,
filled as he always was with gratitude that such a magnificent
creature could belong to him. ‘Ashalan,’ Jadrin called softly, a
voice of the new, horned crown itself, ‘look, my love, to the
window, the moon.’ Ashalan stirred, woken more by the invisible
reverberations of the unseen blood-harp than Jadrin’s words. What
he saw was the willow pale, willow slim form of the witch-boy,
robed now in black, whose hair was an indigo smoke, whose eyes were
black as the shadows of his hair.

‘
It is
late, where have you been?’ asked the King, who could not see the
dark smear upon Jadrin’s breast.

‘
Bathing,’ Jadrin replied in a strange, distant voice. He
looked for a moment at the sky beyond the window. When he turned
his gaze once more upon Ashalan, the king was almost afraid.
Almost. His heart beat faster and Jadrin slipped between the
sheets, cold and salty, feverish and hungry. If Ashalan thought it
odd that his lover should whisper strange words throughout their
pleasure, the heat of the moment put it from his mind. Not even
when Jadrin speared himself on Ashalan’s lap and screamed and
screamed a hundred arcane words, his body arched and tense, his
hands clawing air, did Ashalan suspect that anything was different
from usual. He knew Jadrin to be a bizarre and magical creature and
after three years of his acquaintance knew better than to
anticipate his moods and caprices. Spent and exhausted, he fell
quickly into a contented sleep, where his dreams were
innocent.