Tales of the Old World (68 page)

The corridor ended in an open doorway, soft light spilling out from the open
doorway there. Urged on by a low angry grunt from one of the gaoler creatures,
Giovanni gingerly stepped forward into the room beyond.

The chamber was how he imagined the villa would have looked in its heyday. It
was opulently furnished, and his gaze passed over a tempting platter of fruit
and a crystal decanter of wine laid out on a nearby table—did his captors seek
to trick him into poisoning himself after having him at their mercy for at least
a day as he lay insensible in his cell, he wondered?—and also the oddly
disquieting sight of a painting easel with a blank canvas upon it. But it was
the paintings on the walls all around that drew his immediate attention.

There were a full dozen of them, and they were by far the greatest collection
of art that Giovanni had ever seen.

There he recognised the brushwork of the legendary da Venzio, whose
monumental frescoes decorating the ceiling of the great Temple of Shallya in
Remas were still one of the great wonders of the Old World. And beside it was a
canvas bearing the distinctive Chaos-tainted style of the mad Estalian genius
Dari, whose work had been condemned as heretical two hundred years ago and was
still banned throughout the Empire to this day. Hanging on the wall opposite the
Dari was a work bearing all the hallmarks of the work of Frau Litti. There were
only eight known Litti paintings still in existence, all of them in the
possession of the richest merchant princes of Tilea who competed with each other
in bitterly fought bidding wars to purchase only the rarest and most exquisite
works of art. If this really was a ninth and until now unknown Litti, then its
potential value was truly incalculable.

Giovanni’s senses continued to reel at the wealth of artistic riches that
surrounded him. Over here a work by Bardovo, whose epic depiction of Marco
Columbo’s discovery of Lustria spawned a whole school of lesser talented
imitators. Beside it hung a canvas bearing the disturbing scratch-mark signature
of the mysterious Il Ratzo, who some historians now whispered may not even have
been fully human.

It was only then, as he reached out to touch the da Venzio canvas, his
fingers reverently tracing the maestro’s brushstroke patterns, that an even
greater and more profound realisation about all the paintings collected here
occurred to him.

They were all portraits, and they were all of the same subject: an
alabaster-skinned noblewoman of striking but glacial beauty.

Giovanni gazed from portrait to portrait, his eyes confirming what his mind
would not yet accept. No matter the artist, no matter the difference in their
individual styles, each had painted the same subject, and from life too, if the
telltale details in each painting were to be believed. Here he saw the same
glint of forbidden promise in the dark pools of her eyes, there the same hint of
unspoken secrets behind the faint mocking smile on her lips. But while each
artist had found the same qualities in their subject, each also found in her
something different. In da Venzio’s portrait she was a beguiling angel of
darkness, his painting a blasphemous twin piece to the images of the blessed
goddess of mercy on the temple ceiling in Remas. Bardovo’s work showed her as a
lonely spectral figure standing against a backdrop of a corpse-strewn
battlefield.

How could this be, Giovanni wondered? Da Venzio had lived three hundred years
ago, Bardovo more than a thousand and Frau Litti and one or two others even
longer than that.

A faint breeze passed through the air of the room, sending flickering shadows
over the faces of the portraits as it disturbed the flames of the many candles
which lit the chamber.

“How could artists that lived centuries apart all come to have painted the
same subject?” said a voice from somewhere close behind Giovanni, completing the
thought that his mind dared not yet ask itself.

He turned to face the figure reclining on the couch behind him, a figure who
had not been there moments ago, he was sure. She was even more beautiful in
person, he thought. More beautiful and more terrible than any portrait—even
one by the great da Venzio himself—could ever do full justice to. Her eyes
were endless pools of mystery that drank in everything, surrendering nothing in
return. Her blood-red lips were full and of the same colour as the burning
scarlet rubies which hung at her plunging neckline, revealing flawless skin that
glowed like soft moonlight, skin that had not felt the kiss of sunlight in
centuries.

“I am the Lady Khemalla of Lahmia,” she said in a voice that whispered like
the shifting desert sands of her long-dead homeland. “I bid you welcome to my
home.”

“Then I am not a prisoner here?” asked Giovanni, surprised at his directness
of his own question.

“You are my guest,” she smiled. “And, while you are my guest, it pleases me
for you to paint my portrait.” She gestured at the paintings around them. “As
you can see, I have a taste for art. And occasionally for artists too.”

She smiled at this last comment, blood-red lips curling back to show the
subtle points of concealed fangs.

“Why me?” asked Giovanni, pouring himself a generous measure of wine from the
decanter. Doomed as he was, he saw no need to deny himself a few final
pleasures.

“If you know what I am, then you must understand that it has been many years
since I have gazed upon my own face in the glass of any mirror. To never again
see the features of your reflection, to live so long that you perhaps forget the
image of your own face, can you begin to imagine what that might be like,
mortal? Is it any wonder that so many of my kind give themselves fully over to
madness and cruelty when they have nothing left to remind them of their own
humanity? I can only see myself through the eyes of others, and so I choose to
do so only through the eyes of the greatest artists of each age.”

She paused, favouring him with a look from the deep desert oases of her eyes
as she again gestured at the paintings hanging on the walls around them. “You
should be honoured, little mortal. After all, consider the company I am
including you in here.”

“You know that I have a reputation for only painting the truth as I see it.”
Nervous, he reached to refill his already empty glass, concentrating hard to
quell the involuntary tremor in his hands. “It is a trait of mine that found
little favour with my previous patrons. I have discovered to my cost that people
wish only to have their own flattering self-image of themselves reflected back
at them.”

She smiled at his show of bravado. “I chose you because of your reputation.
You say you only paint the truth, the true soul of your subject. Very well, then
that is what I want, brave little mortal. The truth. Look at me and paint what
you see. To try and capture on canvas the soul of one of my kind; what greater
challenge could there be for an artist?”

“And afterwards, when the work is complete? You will let me leave?”

“You will be free to refuse my hospitality when you have gifted me something
that I deem worthy of your talents. If your work pleases me you will be well
rewarded for your troubles, I promise you.”

“And if it does not, what then?”

The question hung unanswered in the air between them.

Giovanni set down his goblet and went over to the easel and blank canvas set
up nearby. As he had expected, there was a palette of every imaginable kind of
artist’s materials. He rummaged amongst them, selecting a charcoal pencil for
sketching and a knife to sharpen it with. A challenge, she had called it, and so
it was. To paint the soul of a creature of the darkness, an age-old liche-thing,
and yet to paint only the truth of what lay beneath that perfect ageless skin
while still producing something that would please this most demanding of
patrons. This would either be the greatest work of his life, he thought, or
merely his last.

He turned back to his waiting subject, his practised eye seeing her at this
earliest stage as merely a vexing collection of surfaces, angles, lines and
subtle blends of light and shadow. The fine detail, in which lay those crucial
insubstantial elements that would determine whether he lived or died here, would
come later.

“Shall we begin?” he said.

Like the villa’s other inhabitants, he worked only at night now and slept by
day. Each night after sundown they came for him, and each night she sat for him.
She talked while he worked—he always encouraged his subjects to talk, the
better to understand them and their lives, for a portrait should speak of far
more than its subject’s mere outward physical appearance—and as he worked he
heard tales of her homeland. Tales of gods, heroes and villains whose names and
deeds are remembered now by none other than those of her kind; tales of mighty
cities and impregnable fortresses now reduced to a few ancient crumbling ruins
buried and forgotten beneath the desert sands.

Some nights they did not come for him. On those nights, she sent apologies
for her absence, and gifts of fine wines and food, and books to let him pass the
time in his cell more easily. The books, usually works of history or philosophy,
fascinated him. Several of them were written in languages completely unknown to
Giovanni—the languages of legendary and far Cathay or Nippon, he thought—while one was composed of thin leafs of hammer-beaten copper and inlaid with a
queer hieroglyphic script which he doubted was even human in origin.

He knew that there were other occupants of the villa, although besides his
silent faceless gaolers and his patron herself he had seen none of them. But as
he lay in his cell reading on those work-free nights, he heard much activity
going on around him. Each night brought visitors to the place. He heard the
clatter of rider’s hooves and the rumble of coach wheels and the jangle of pack
team harnesses, and once he thought he heard the beating of heavy leather wings
and perhaps even saw the fleeting shadow of something vast and bat-like
momentarily blotting out the moonlit window above his bed.

There were other sounds too—screams and sobs and once the unmistakable cry
of an infant child—from the cellars deep beneath his feet. At such times
Giovanni buried his face into the mattress of his bedding or read aloud from the
book in his hand until either the sounds had ceased or he had convinced himself
that he could no longer hear them.

One night he awoke in his room. The sitting had been cut short that night.
One of the black-cloaked servant things had entered and fearfully handed its
mistress a sealed scroll tube. As she read it her face had changed—transformed, Giovanni thought—and for a second he saw something of the savage
and cruel creature of darkness that lay beneath the human mask she presented to
him. The news was both urgent and unwelcome and she had abruptly ended the
night’s session, issuing curt orders for him to be escorted back to his room. He
had fallen asleep as soon as he lay down on the bedding, exhausted by the
continued effort of keeping up with the night-time schedule of his new employer.

Again, he heard the sound that had awoken him. There was someone in the room
with him.

A face detached itself from the shadowy gloom of the cell, leaning over the
bed and glared angrily down angrily at him. Jagged teeth, too many of them for
any human mouth, crowded out from snarling lips. It was her servant, Mariato,
the one that had approached him in the tavern that night. He had obviously just
fed, and his breath was thick with the slaughterhouse reek of blood.

“Scheherazade. That is what I shall call you,” the vampire growled, glaring
down at him with eyes full of hate and the madness of blood-lust. “Do you know
the name, little painter? It is a name from her homeland, a storyteller who
prolonged her life for a thousand and one nights by entertaining her master with
tales and fables.”

The vampire raised one bristle-covered hand, pointing at the half-face of
Mannslieb in the sky above. The ring on his finger flashed green in the
moonlight.

“How many nights do you think you have left, my Scheherazade? Her enemies are
close, and by the time Mannslieb’s face shines full again, we will be gone from
here. Will your precious painting be finished by then? I think not, for such
things take great time and care, do they not?”

He paused, leaning in closer, hissing into Giovanni’s face, stifling him with
the sour reek of his carrion breath.

“She will not take you with us, and she cannot leave you here alive for our
enemies to find. So what is she to do with you then, my Scheherazade?”

The vampire melted back into the shadows, its voice a whispering promise from
out of the darkness. “When Mannslieb’s face shines full again, then you will be
mine.”

“Your servant Mariato, he doesn’t like me.” She looked up with interest. This
was the first time he had dared speak to her without permission. She lay
reclining on the couch in the position that he had first seen her in. A bowl of
strange dark-skinned fruit lay on the floor before her. The main composition of
the piece was complete, and all he needed to concentrate on now was the detail
of the face.

“He is jealous,” she answered. “He is afraid that I will grow bored with him
and seek to make another my favourite in his stead.” She looked at him sharply.
“Has he disturbed you? Has he said or done anything to interrupt your work?”

Giovanni kept his eyes on his work, unwilling to meet her keen gaze. “Has he
a right to be jealous?”

She smiled, favouring him with a look of secret amusement. “Perhaps,” she
mused. “His kind always have their place at my side, but they are always dull
and unimaginative. Perhaps I will take a new consort, not a warrior or a
nobleman this time. Perhaps this time an artist? What do you think, little
mortal? Shall I make you my new paramour and grant you the gift of eternal life
in darkness?”