I first discovered Tanith Lee’s writing while on holiday (in Spain, I think). As ever, I had underestimated how much reading I would do in two weeks and, with several days’ holiday still remaining, had finished all the books I’d brought with me. The local shops offered very little by way of science fiction and fantasy, but on one of the revolving stands bearing assorted paperbacks were two books with eye-catching covers. These were The Book of the Damned and The Book of the Beast, both by Tanith Lee; an author I’d heard much about but had never actually read.

Not my usual fare by any means, but there was nothing else of interest to be had, so I bought them. This proved to be one of the wisest impulse buys I’ve ever made. Within the first few pages of The Book of the Damned I was completely hooked; on the characters, on the setting – Paradys, surely the most vividly realised city since Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar – but most of all on the writing.

Through her careful choice of words and expert sculpting of phrases, the author managed to bring the narrative to life. I could feel the horror, feel the lust, feel the torment of the characters whose lot was laid bare within these pages; I could taste the decadence and magic that permeated every brick and stone of this ancient, gothic city.

Despite the books’ brevity I became totally immersed, and emerged at their conclusion blinking up at the daylight and questioning whether the world I returned to was any more real than the one I’d left between the covers of these Secret Books of Paradys.

Tanith’s writing does that; seduces you and transports you to realms of her imagining. It comes as no surprise that she has won a brace of World Fantasy Awards and a British Fantasy Award, nor that her work has been shortlisted for the Nebula. The only mystery is that she hasn’t won more.

There is surely no better way to launch the new Imaginings project than with a volume by Tanith Lee. Eleven wonderful and rich-textured stories, two of which appear in print for the first time and five of which have never appeared anywhere before – one of these had yet to be completed when we started putting this volume together (yes, it genuinely is that new) – and all of which deserve to be treasured.

On that long ago book-hungry holiday, I stumbled by happy accident upon one of the finest writers it’s ever been my privilege to read. Little did I imagine that twenty-odd years later I would not only be fortunate enough to count Tanith and her husband John as dear friends, but I would be publishing an entire collection of her stories.

For all of the above reasons, I am proud to unveil Cold Grey Stones by Tanith Lee, volume 1 of Imaginings. Enjoy.

Ian Whates

November 2011

Clockatrice

Dare I say, like the genius composer Shostakovich, I’m fascinated by clocks – be they working or retired. One day I bought a medium-size clock, lacking all insides, (it has since received an effective face and hands) and clothed in thin slabs of green onyx, with little gilded feet that peculiarly resemble birds with upraised wings. My husband (John Kaiine) called it the Clockatrice. And my mind at once began to work out how that deadly creature, the cockatrice, which turns any viewer into stone, might be connected to a clock. The result of my mental game follows.

I

Poor girl. Beautiful Diana, named for a goddess, and barely sixteen years of age. Just after midnight she descended through the gardens to meet her lover. And before any clock could strike one, she was as beautiful as she was dead.

The gardens at Sessonby are still very fine, but back then, in the 1590s, they had a reputation, being influenced by startling new discoveries, and even alchemy. Mazes of topiary cut in extraordinary forms (swans, minotaurs), looping paths that led to groves dominated by such items as gigantic bronze astrolabes. These indicated the place was full of magical clues. They were clever gardens, where also nocturnally sometimes hares appeared, spirit-like, from the park outside, wolfish foxes, or snakes with enamelled skins – creatures of sorcery and impulse. The Queen herself, the Great She, Elizabeth, had visited Sessonby.

Diana had no thought for the Queen, even though Diana’s hair was hennaed to amber, fashionably, to honour the Queen’s own tresses, (or, by now, her wigs.)

The moon however, Queen of Night, did exercise some authority. Full this evening, it hunted things as it moved westward, striking between screens and curtains of leaves. A stone satyr, for example, with sly, sidelong eyes, or an owl of marble that seemed to alight on spread wings below the steps. And Diana, too. For whenever it could, the moon splashed her with illumination, her blonde yellow dress with its shield-stiff bodice, the tops of her tender breasts above, her white face, and her hands flitting to the narrow gate.

Outside the gate opened a glade. This was of course contrived, and at its centre stood a shadow clock, based on an artefact of the ancient Egyptians, as perhaps authorized by Elizabeth’s own Magus, John Dee. The way the sun fell on the clock would tell the hours. But at noon the clock’s position must be reversed in order to monitor the hours after. Tonight the clock looked spitefully alert. Instead of daylight the moon boiled white across its brazen spike. And beyond loomed the huge pine trees, which Diana’s great grandfather had planted in the time of Henry VII, the Tudors’ first bloody-handed king.

It was said a stag had been killed on the spot and buried whole there, the tree then planted in its vitals. Nourished by the feast the pine grew to vast height and girth.

Diana had never liked the pine, and maybe this story was the cause. She had had an old nurse as well in childhood, who said the pine was unnatural and ate any small animals that strayed near it. Even a little child, once.

A tremendous silence had filled the gardens. Diana noticed that especially now she herself had ceased to move. Quite often, inflamed by a full moon, a bird might sit singing. (Just as moths were stirred up, and fluttered about.) Tonight no bird sang. Not a thread of wind silked the branches. The foreign shrubs had congealed to black linen and gave off no perfume.

Why had she made a promise to meet her lover here? They had slight need to be hasty, or furtive, she and Robert, for they were betrothed and soon to be wed. Some fancy of his, and she had acquiesced, as a wife must learn to do. But see, he had failed her, had not bothered to arrive after all. She should return at once to the house.

The moon slipped a notch along the sky, and a single ray shot between the leaves like a white spear.

A curious odour was on the air. It suggested – chickens, Diana thought, yet too something tindery, corrosive, and old.

And then she did hear a sound, which was not the wind through the leaves, nor the rustle of her dress. It was high above her.

Unwillingly she lifted her gaze, up, up the length of the pine tree, among its bristled knots of needles. What did she see? Something? Only a black shadow, shifting and turning, and then the moon’s relentless ray slithered on a length of substance almost like chainmail, the half-metallic armour of a serpent or a lizard.

Astonished, Diana stared. She could make nothing of it, and yet her heart beat with tremendous blows. She wished immediately to run away. But the noise came once more, that strange thin hissing, and the faint stink on the air blew over her, through her, and she could not move. She could not lift one foot from the ground, not even one hand to cover her eyes that would not close. Then silence fell back into the garden. It filled her up. It drowned her from within. Her heart had frozen. Diana was a thing of petrified material. She was colourless, amber and blonde all gone away, gray like the satyr, moon-like as the marble owl. She had been changed to stone, and as stone they found her the next day, in the glade below the pine tree. Where you may see her still. Tonight even, if you wish.

“Certainly there’s a statue there of a young girl,” he said, “in authentic Elizabethan clothes. Obviously tourists get told the story of what happened, and how she was turned to granite.”

“Do they believe it?”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Christ,” he said, and laughed.

“Christ,” she answered briskly, “could of course undo any evil spell and set her free. Are you expecting Him to visit?”

Robert Trenchall frowned at her. He had a strong, dark face and the sort of brooding eyes she had seen already in pictures of him in various magazines. His black hair was attractively long, hanging just over the collar of his leather jacket.

Probably she should resist the urge to challenge him. He could always have her thrown off his property. She was not even a journalist, only a freelance photographer.

“Last night,” Dru continued, now she hoped in a calm, pacifying way, “you said we could see the statue.”

“I did. But no one took me up on it.”

She thought he must hate it all, allowing people to traipse about the gardens and the rest of the estate of Sessonby. His aunt, the late, famous artist, Vera Reive, had left it to him, with all its debts, five years before. He was seldom here save in the line of duty, which must drag him away from his other work in the theatre, and with music. Dru recalled an interview in which he said he would have loved Sessonby, had it not been for the constant need to prostitute the place, (tours, weekends, Historical Nights) in order to secure its upkeep.

The previous evening had been part of just such a junket. An expensive, lavish dinner in the grand dining room, and the appropriate music and story-telling by Trenchall and a pair of his actor friends. The last tale, dramatically relayed just after midnight, was the legend of poor Diana Sesby, who in 1594 became literally petrified by the breath of a cockatrice, hatched in the pine tree at the foot of the gardens. Indeed, no one had taken up Trenchall’s offer of viewing the stony corpse. Possibly his scowl had deterred them. Or the pouring English rain.

But it was 10 a.m. now, and full light of a May morning.

“So where,” she said, “should I go?” Then realizing, she added sweetly, “aside, obviously, from hell?”

“Sorry,” he said, scowling now at his combat boots, firmly embedded in early summer mud.

“That’s OK. It must be – difficult. But I am interested.”

“I’ll take you there,” he said.

“There’s no –”

“It’s fine. The way the gardens are now, you might get lost. No, I don’t mean because you’re some dumb damn stupid woman. The mazes are overgrown, and the steps, of course, partly gave way years back. Just bear with me, and I’ll guide you down.”

Dru glanced at him. Her guide into the dark. For even at this pre-noon hour, she had already seen the world of the gardens below was steeped in shadow, sombre and unsure.

“Thanks,” she said. And went with him along the swampy lawn.

Diana Sesby still stood in the tangled glade. The pine tree was still there too, towering up, no doubt grown taller since the sixteenth century.

The whole space was determinedly blank, despite the bright sunlight. It might have been roofed by a dome of polarized glass.

Dru edged around the statue. It was the only one, the satyr and the owl were missing, as was the mysterious shadow clock. She could not be sure the remaining sculpture was genuinely Elizabethan, but the carven garments looked authentic, the stiff bodice and ornately arranged hair. Even the long string of – presumably – pearls. One omission though, no ruff behind the neck. Which was a little odd. Ruffs had been a fashion must in the 1590s.

Dru had thought Trenchall would leave her once he had shown her how to negotiate the steps. But no, he was loitering, watching.

Raising the Olympus, she aimed and took a slanting shot of the petrified girl.

“Not digital, then?” Trenchall remarked.

“No.” She framed another lower shot. Straightening, she said, “One puzzle. If something turns you to stone, why do your clothes turn too? I mean, flesh and blood and bone and hair – fine. That’s living matter, or only recently dead, like hair-ends and nails. But a dress? A necklace… I’m no scientist, but that makes no sense to me. Never has.”

“Hey, maybe it didn’t happen, then. Maybe she’s only a statue.”

“Except…” said Dru. She leaned forward and peered into the statue’s face. Diana Sesby, if it was she, had been a good seven inches shorter. Which made it easier to stare down and to see – “My God,” Dru said. He did not respond. “I assume other people have noticed this, er, detail?”

“Yes.”

Dru, however, realigned the camera for a close-up. He had the courtesy to keep quiet as she angled in on the tiny moth, caught there just above the girl’s stone temple, at the edge of her immutable hairline. The moth was also formed of stone, and chiselled with an incredible, one might say a needless, delicate accuracy. The wings were thin enough to be translucent. Two minuscule antennae were just visible against the tendrils of human hair.

Trenchall said, “And yes, it resembles the proper sort of moth for the time. And yes, it seems to be part of the statue, matching stone, etc. But I wouldn’t bet on its credentials. A cunning fake is much more likely.”

Sunday evening was to be the banquet in the old hall, under the rafters in “a shining forest of candles,” as the brochure put it. It was the climax of the weekend, but Dru missed it. The reason being that she was instead up in Robert Trenchall’s private rooms.

His invitation had arrived about an hour before the official meal was due to start. One of the house gofers brought it, smiling and non-committal.

Dru wondered if Trenchall frequently chose a single young woman from the medley of guests. And if he did, was it a perk for him or a prize for her? She could politely refuse. But she had always quite fancied him. She liked his music enough too. Besides, she was curious. Even if they did not end up in the sack, she had no objections to seeing some of the house that lay off the public route.

In fact, his flat, as he called it, was very plain and very much modernized, with pale walls and darkly pale curtaining, and only contemporary abstract pictures that, while Dru thought them quite good, were not to her taste. Outside the high windows the gardens shaded rapidly under more threatening clouds. A necessary wood fire had been lit in the main room, un-Elizabethan but warming.

Trenchall greeted her with easy grace, as if they had known each other some while, and theirs was a liaison of mutual if light-hearted respect. They ate smoked salmon, steaks, strawberries, and drank a French white wine sturdy enough to cope with pink fish, red meat, and scarlet fruit.

“I’m glad you like the wine,” he said. “I thought you would. I chose it with you in mind.”

“Really. How thoughtful.”

He grinned. Oh, irresistible. “I imagine,” he said, “you’ll be working this up, I mean the tour here, into something you can sell.”

“No,” Dru said. “I can’t afford to pay estate fees for using any of the Sessonby legends professionally. Let alone pictures from the grounds. It was just personal interest.”

“In other words, you’ll devise something different enough, then rip us off.”

Dru looked at him cautiously. It had all been going so well. “I don’t do that, Mr. Trenchall.”

“Robert. Of course you do it. Any artist, photographer, writer who comes here does it. I do it whenever I go anywhere – I use anything that interests me. And if I can’t afford to pay, I change it so it’s something more – how shall I say? – original.”

Dru put down her glass. “If you like, I’ll sign a disclaimer.”

“Listen, Dru, I really don’t mind. I don’t care.” He sat back. “Tell me, what do you really think of Diana’s statue? The whole rigmarole?”

“I think it could be true,” she said flatly. “Why not? Peculiar stuff happens all the time. Yes, it will probably have a rational explanation, or at least a scientifically provable one. But it can still happen. Imagine if someone had told a man in Shakespeare’s time that every snowflake has an intricate and unique pattern. Very likely, in those days, he would believe you. And it’s a fact. But when someone told you that the first time – weren’t you astounded?”

“I don’t recall. Maybe.”

“You should have been. It’s crazy.”

“The cockatrice though,” he said. He paused, then said, “When I was a kid Vera – aunt Vera Reive – scared the shit out of me with that story. The egg – they get born from eggs, it seems, like snakes and other reptiles – was centuries old, caught up somehow in the young stem of the pine tree. As the tree grew, so did the egg. They matured together. And of course, it had been nourished with blood. They originate in the Middle East, or the Med – depends who you read – cockatrices. Or -trixes, whatever the plural is. A cock-bird with the back end and tail of a lizard. Somehow that is such a disgusting idea. Not like a man with a bull’s head or a girl with the tail of a fish – they seem OK, aesthetically, if you like… But that combination. Chicken flesh and reptile. I had bad dreams for a year.”

“You never used it in your music, did you?”

“Fuck no. Wouldn’t want to. But think of it. Just think of it.” He sat forward and suddenly gripped her hand across the table. A curious seduction move? Or did he mean all this? His handsome face was intense and serious. “It hatched that very night, when that poor bloody girl, Diana – a kid, just sixteen – came down to meet her faithless lover. And its poisonous chicken-lizard breath turned her to stone, that’s how they do it, it seems, and the moth caught in her hair and went to stone too. But she was just as stricken, as helpless, as a moth.”

“Why did her clothing change to stone too?” Dru asked again, a sharp stab at practicality.

But he smiled then, still holding her hand. “You’re a hard lady, hard as stone. Let me tell you then. It didn’t. The statue was naked. That’s the actual story. The stone garments, even the stone pearls, were carved and added later. Her original ones were in ribbons, some on the ground, all torn and shredded, as if a “Hurricano” had blown them off. And the ruff was so fragile it had disintegrated completely into nothing. They never tried to replace it in stone, thought it extra unlucky. They’d brought in John Dee, apparently, the Queen’s alchemist. But by then the cockatrice was gone. Flown away. It had chicken wings, obviously. Or is it bat-wings? It could do what it bloody well wanted.”

Her hand was still in his. She said, “I like the story. Why didn’t you tell this part last night, to the others?”

“The others were pissed and thick as four short planks. And you don’t like the story. It makes your flesh creep. And you believe. As I do. Even though I don’t. Naturally.”

“Yes.”

Then he rose and leaned across the table and kissed her. Dru enjoyed the kiss. She had thought she would.

“I’ll tell you about the clock,” he said. “But in a little while.”

They slow-motioned into the bedroom. A masculine yet comfortable room, and this time with central heating. The sex was very, very good.

Next morning, (Monday) standing with the other visitors, at 11 a.m., her bag on the drive, waiting for the communal coach, she saw a taxi drive up.

A thin, chic American girl got out, very blonde and with flawless teeth, which she did not reveal until Robert Trenchall appeared. “Hi Robbie!”

“Hi, Zuzi,” said Robert Trenchall.

Neither of them now saw anyone else in the whole world. Even a gofer had to come out to pay the cab. She had predicted nothing else, not since rising at seven, when Trenchall had kissed her quickly on the cheek and said, “Apologies, but we have to hurry. My steady’s due back any minute.”

Steady. What a nice, old-fashioned term.

Dru had been out of his flat inside five minutes.

And by sunset, she was back in London.

II

Lucky boy. Gallant Robert Southurst, named for his father and eighteen years of age. That night in 1594, he had been with his low-life mistress, who held him yet in a grasp of greed and menace, and thus he failed to meet Diana in the gardens at Sessonby. As she was struck to stone, he was howling with the pleasures of lust, and so escaped a fate similar to hers.

Sometime after, when Robert Southurst had seemingly recovered from the remorse and revulsion occasioned by his bride-to-be’s end, (and its type) he was persuaded to marry another. Diana had been youthful and lovely, and he had liked her well enough. The new wife was two or three years Robert’s elder, of the sternest Protestant leaning, and a shrew. He managed to sire four children on her, or somebody did. But a vox populi of the time reports that, in his thirties, he declared, “My true bride was slain by a cucu-trix. While I, alas, have wed it!”

He did outlive this spouse nevertheless. And in his fortieth year devised a number of curious mechanical toys. These were put together by various artisans, and paraded about his own house, (Longhampton) to the fascination and fright of callers.

The most elaborate of the inventions was, so contemporary chroniclers had it, a “Grete Clocke” that had been established in one of the west chambers.

This artefact, reportedly seven feet in height and trimmed with ebony, gold, and silver, kept good time all day and evening, until it sounded the fateful twelve of midnight. On the twelfth stroke, a pallid figure would glide out from a panel set in below the clock-face, a figure almost life-size, which represented a slender young girl with blonde-orange hair and a blonde gown. Though a doll, she closely resembled, it appeared, Diana Sesby. Enough so that an old woman who had known Diana, on seeing the apparition, fainted, and died not long after.

Having left the clock, the figure (stiffly, one must suppose) turned its head once to either side, then lifted its arms as if in supplication. But then they fell, and the animation slid slowly – and “moste fearsomely” – back into the clock-case. Following which the panel closed, and the clock ceased its motion with a clank. In order that it resume full function the next day, it must be wound up, and such was its ponderous quality, several men were needed for the task. None liked it, either. They had been known to say the clock was cursed, and would cast all Longhampton into the Pit.

Notably, aside from the unnerving Diana doll, the base of the clock rested on two bizarre supports. They were described as two “Crowing Cocks” of blackest basalt, each about four feet high, and with gilded beaks, claws and crests, and the raised wings of “Gryphones.” They stood savagely erect on their hugely taloned feet, in attitudes suggesting extreme rage and violence. While from the rear of both swelled out a lizard’s backside, ending in a horrid coiled tail, these endpieces of contrastingly purest white-silver, scored to an armoury of scales.

They had been heard to hiss too, the pair of creatures. They did it randomly, if always between sunfall and dawn. One maidservant of the house had gone mad, her hair turning white and falling from her head in a single night, because, as she swore on the holy name of the Christ, both beasts one dusk had turned to glare at her, their ruby eyes giving off a tinderous flash. The west chamber was said to have stunk for several hours, a reek like a poultry-yard, but also of gunpowder.

It was not generally an age of long life, but Robert Southurst survived both the death of the Queen, and the eras of King James and the primary Charles, Robert himself leaving the world in his seventy-first year. He had by then also survived two further wives, but he had kept them busy. He had peopled his house all told with seven sons and nine living daughters.

About three nights before that of his demise, Robert was sitting banked up on pillows in his bed – the custom then, rather than lie flat.

He was an old man, of course, his near seventy-one more the equivalent of a modern eighty-six. His lush black hair was all gone and he wore a night-cap. He was drinking one too, mulled wine from the fire now sinking on the bedroom hearth.

Outside the insectile, many-paned eyes of the windows, a thin tired moon was lying on the black sky. It was a cold midnight, at autumn’s end.

Robert believed himself awake. But then a panel opened in the tapestried wall, and out glided a slender young woman with hennaed hair. And her gown was all in rags and streamers, and through it he glimpsed her fair white body, more glimpses than she had ever allowed him during their courtship. For he knew her at once as Diana Sesby.

“God’s mercy,” whispered Robert, and spilled his wine down the embroidered coverlet.

But Diana said to him plaintively, “Oh, Robert, my dear love, why did you not come to meet me that night?”

And he shook from head to toe in the warm bed, and his feet went cold as frost.

“Which night? When – when?”

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Cold Grey Stones

Tanith Lee

Contents

In Praise of Happy Accidents

An Introduction

Clockatrice

I

II