Tanith Lee - Nightshades.pdf - Tanith Lee - widez2

Tanith Lee, born in London, began writing at the age of nine, and was

first published in her early twenties. Since then she has produced

numerous novels of a fantastical nature and several radio plays, and has

twice won the World Fantasy Award for her short stories. Her previous

novels Heart-Beast and Elephantasm are also published by Headline.

She lives in East Sussex with her husband, the writer John Kaiine, and

a black-and-white cat.

'One of the most powerful and intelligent writers to work in fantasy' -

Publishers Weekly

'Restores one's faith in fiction as the expression of imagination and

original thought' - Guardian

'Bizarre imagination and elegantly decadent atmosphere' - Daily Mail

'Truly exotic, full of colourful characters, dark secrets, aromatic spices…

an author at the height of her powers' - The Dark Side

Also by Tanith Lee

Heart-Beast

Elephantasm

Nightshades

Thirteen Journeys into Shadow

Tanith Lee

The right of Tanith Lee to be identified as the Author of

the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the

First published in Great Britain in this collection in 1993 by HEADLINE

BOOK PUBLISHING

First published in paperback in 1994 by HEADLINE BOOK

PUBLISHING

A HEADLINE FEATURE paperback 1098765432

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means

without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise

circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is

published and without a similar condition being imposed on the

subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to

real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

ISBN 0 7472 4250 X

Printed and bound in Great Britain by HarperCollins Manufacturing,

Glasgow

HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING A division of Hodder Headline PLC

Headline House

79 Great Titchfield Street

London W1P7FN

Contents

NIGHTSHADE 1

— first ever publication

THE MERMAID 101

— first published in the USA

AFTER THE GUILLOTINE 113

— first published 1985 in Amazing Magazine (USA)

MEOW 129

— first published in the USA

IL BACIO (IL CHIAVE) 141

— first published 1983 in Amazing Magazine (USA)

A ROOM WITH A VIE 159

— first published 1980 in New Terrors 1 (UK)

PAPER BOAT 175

— first published 1978 in Arts Council

New Stories 3 (UK)

BLUE VASE OF GHOSTS 191

— first published 1983 in Dragonfields Magazine (Canada)

PINEWOOD 213

— first published 1980 in Year's Best Horror Stories 14 (USA)

THE JANFIA TREE 219

— first published 1989 in Blood Is Not Enough (USA)

THE DEVIL'S ROSE 237

—first published 1988 in Women of Darkness (USA)

HUZDRA 261

— first published 1977 in Year's Best Horror Stories 5 (USA)

THREE DAYS 281

— first published in the USA

THE NOVEL

NIGHTSHADE

Nightshade

In 1974, DAW Books of America accepted my fantasy novel, THE

BIRTHGRAVE, and liberated me into the world of professional writing.

I had already written three fantasies by then, with no eye to

publication anywhere. They were the previously mentioned

BIRTHGRAVE, and THE STORM LORD, and the SF novel DON'T

BITE THE SUN.

Strangely, the moment 1 got my break into fantasy writing, I

conceived the idea of the following book, NIGHTSHADE. I knew it

would not be suitable for DAW, but couldn't resist it. Although set

'somewhere' in the Mediterranean, and 'sometime' in the late Sixties

(probably) it was and is what I would class as a contemporary novel.

But then again… It certainly has some exotic and wildly fantastic

elements.

There is the Dionysos theme: this god, generally dismissed as the deity

of wine - he is much more - has always intrigued me. The master of

inner terrors and truths, the breaker of chains, his power passes through

the freeing medium of drink, or any strong excitement, including

madness.

There is, too, the character of the anti-heroine, Sovaz.

Elizabeth Taylor, surely one of the most beautiful women in the world,

is proof that a beautiful human being may also possess great talent and

character, and a fully operational soul. And yet I confess a fascination

with those great beauties, male and female, who are, operationally,

soulless. One glimpses them now and then, usually briefly. What, if there

is no warmth, is making them tick? What, aside from beauty, has

vampirized them? Some of this I have tried to investigate in the form of

the pale, red-lipped icon of Sovaz.

ONE

It was seven o'clock; the sun was dying on the sea. The water, like the

sky, was glazed by a smoky glare, which diluted at its edges before

smashing itself delicately on the beach.

The house stood on the highest point of the cliff overhanging the bay,

the shoreline, and the wide sea falling away before it into the mouth of the

sunset, the levels of the city falling away behind into shadow.

The house was sealed from the city by a high wall, reminiscent of a jail,

broken only by a pair of oriental wrought iron gates. The wall mostly shut

off the elevation of the cliff, and the induced gardens which clothed it, yet

a scent of roses, oleanders, peach and lemon trees filtered occasionally into

the streets below. Rising from the gates, a hundred shallow stone steps,

indented at their centres as if from age and great use, led in four tiers to

the house. On each landing stood two marble columns with horses' heads.

The house itself had a strange decaying look, the stucco of its balconies

and arches purplish-brown as if steeped in incense, erupting into growths

of vine and tamarisk.

The first lamps and neons were spangling across the city to the south.

The polarized windows of the house, losing the stain of the sun, became

black.

Sovaz stood at the window, telling the chain of pearls like a rosary,

listening to the sounds that her husband made, putting on his clothes in

the dressing room. Such immaculate, precise sounds: now the rustle of the

linen shirt, now the icy clink of a cuff-link lifted from its onyx box.

Presently he came into the room.

'You aren't dressed yet.'

'No.'

'It's very dark in here.'

Kristian touched the discreet electric bell. The door opened almost at

once and the black girl, Leah, crossed the room and let down the drapes of

the three tall windows without a word. Light came obediently, spreading

from the master switch at the touch of Kristian's hand. Sovaz' suite was

mainly black, the lamps gold or green silk with crystal pendants on jade

stands. A scented joss stick was burning in an antique bowl of bronze.

Sovaz glanced aside at Kristian in his perfect white dinner clothes, the

little cold fires of emeralds winking on his cuffs. He was forty-eight: a very

handsome man of excellent physique, his hair a rich blue-black which led

women who had failed with him (most women) to suppose aloud that he

had it dyed. His face was arrogant, remote. His eyes, a light but definite

blue, seemed extraordinarily intent by contrast with the eyes of Sovaz

which, even as she looked at him, appeared unfocused. She stood in her

slip, playing with the pearls absently.

'Leah,' Kristian said, 'help my wife with her dress.'

The black girl lifted the dress from the bed and quickly, deftly, slipped

Sovaz into it. Like the room, like Leah herself, the dress was black.

'Were you intending to wear those pearls?' Kristian said. 'Where are the

rubies? They would be more suitable.'

'If you think so,' Sovaz said.

Leah, who had already opened the ivory box, brought the rubies and

proceeded to fasten them in position. Sovaz let go the chain of pearls; they

fell into the rugs. (Leah bent immediately to retrieve them.) Sovaz went to

the arrangement of mirrors. She touched hesitantly at her neck.

'I look as if I had had my throat cut.'

Tanith Lee - Nightshades.pdf

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