Free The Secret Book of Paradys by Tanith Lee

sometimes only the spits turned, or coloured lanterns were lit in the ceiling, so it became hell. Today it was gloomy.
    They had all avoided me, the intellectual riff-raff of the tavern. I was a plague-carrier, I was accursed, and they knew it by instinct. No one I had ever known well was present. I guarded my corner like a wounded dog, and nobody drew near. A meal was served me I did not eat, and wine. Sometimes I wrote a line or two on pieces of paper I had found in my coat pockets. Generally I slept. Time had stopped. The day would not move, it sat there on the sills of the slit-eyed windows. The bells, the clocks, they continually kept striking the same hour, three o’clock, over and over. When would I be done with it?
    Then I woke and there was a new shadow running with the spilled wine from the bottle. The windows had pulled closer and day been shoved out. I poured the last glass and took a mouthful. The room was unusually silent, and two men in black were before me by the table. How long had they been there? Were they there now, or did I conjure them?
    “Are you real then?” I said, with a flippancy that oddly stirred me.
    “You are to come with us,” one said to me.
    In the cock-snake’s cave, eyes glittered out on us. We were an event.
    “Sergeant Death, are you arresting me?” I said. “Who sent you, and why must I go with you?” My heart had stopped, I could not feel it beat. “From von Aaron? Is she dead?”
    “We do not belong to the Baron. But that is the house. Get up, monsieur.”
    “Or will you make me?” I said.
    “If necessary.”
    “It will not be.” I put down the glass. My heart flickered, it had only been sleeping. I did not feel as I had done. I was alert, I was expectant. What had happened? Oh she was alive. That must be so. She was alive. She had sent them for me. Yes, they were hers, these creatures white-faced in their black. “We’ll go then,” I said. “as quickly as you like.”
    I went out jauntily with the death’s-heads, one on either side. Plainly, Iwas a prisoner on my way to execution. Yes, the silken rope about my neck, the dagger of pleasure driven through and through.
    People turned to look at us on the streets. The infernal escort, the happy condemned. They did not prevent me when I whistled a popular song of the City, or when I plucked a spray of flowers off a bush growing in a wall, and insanely twirled it. Sometimes I spoke to my guards. I asked them if they had had difficulty in finding me. Not much, they said, my haunts were known. Now one spoke, now the other, but each seemed to have use of the same voice.
    From a height, I glanced behind me once, and saw the river, a scimitar of pure metal, white-hot, as the City lapsed in the shallows of the dying afternoon. A boat or two moved on the water, the brotherhood of Charon was out early.
    Then they took to the alleys, avoiding the Observatory Terrace, and going around at the back of the tall four-faced clock on the hill, not wanting me to be seen by the influential or the fashionable of the district.
    My excitement increased. Sex and anguish were mingled in it, doubt and nervous delight. Most of the straw was swept from the street. No man sat to bar the gateway of the house. I hurried up the steps and rang the bell, and they came on behind me, the two black dogs who had hunted me and brought me soft across the City in their mouths.
    The door was opened. I burst in, then stood looking about as if I owned the property.
    “If you will go up to the salon, monsieur,” said the domestic.
    I ran up the stair. I had not felt the paving stones under my feet throughout our walk here. Twirling the flower-spray, I thought, None of them either conducts me or follows me. I am to go there alone. Something pristine in that. Only the purified accolyte may enter the presence of the high priest.
    The salon was full of the last flare of sunlight, its blinds raised. All the dazzling brilliance centred in one flaming entity, before