CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 2: More Tales of Beauty and Strangeness by Mike Allen

Author:Mike Allen [Allen, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mythic Delirium Books
Published: 2011-11-12T20:40:30+00:00

But Jandur sat down on the bench and murmured a prayer of thanks to a god of his own country—both for the riches Razved had given him, and for his release from proximity to the glass goblet.

* * *

Deep in the dark thereafter, Prince Razved repaired alone to his most isolate chamber. Not even the moon might look in, save through the sombre vitreus of thick windows clad in gauze.

Dark was in the flagon, too, the black wine aromatic of roses, which he had had his servants bring him.

The haunting madman had been locked away, shackled tonight for good measure. Not only were merchants prudent, after all.

Razved, bathed in hot water and spices, clad in loose and sensuous garments, unwrapped at last the goblet. Holding it only through a piece of fine embroidered cloth, he set it on the table by his couch.

Despite the lack of light, even so the faintest and most mellifluous tinctures of colour began at once to flutter to and fro in the glass. They were like birds in a cloud, or fish in a ghostly pool. Dilute crimson melded to opalescent rose—to amber—to emerald. All this—just from his touch through cloth, his hungry gaze upon it.

In a while he leant forward and filled the vessel full of inky wine. Rather than dim the spectrum in the glass, the blackness seemed to bring it out. Gold shot through the other tints like benign lightning.

Razved sighed. He had put away his woes.

He placed his fingers upon the rim of the goblet. At once, it sang for him. He could hear again a woman’s voice in the notes, clear as a silver bell, and as he kept just one finger on the vessel, the melody—and melody it was—went on and on. Razved was not afraid. Unlike the shoddy glass-seller, he was royal, a warrior of a warlike and powerful line—although he had never ridden to battle, nor seen what battle may produce aside from valour. The glass was neither evil nor any threat. It was enchanted, and enchanting. It was a delicious toy the gods had sent him, in recompense for all the other frustrations of his days.

Unable any longer to detain himself, the Prince now put both his hands on the goblet. Intoxicating heat raced through his arms and filled his body, as he drew the brim towards his lips. He drained the wine, and the act of drinking became instead the act of kissing, while the singing notes entered his brain, and floated there like iridium feathers.

He found he had lain back, the cup held firm against his heart. And then it seemed the cup too had taken hold of him. Female arms, slender and strong, encircled his body. For an instant he glimpsed, lifted above him, a maiden made of flames and waters, flowing down on him in waves and foam and sparks, more sinuous than any serpent. Then a mouth famished as his own fastened on his lips, a tongue like smoothest myrrh and ice-hot quicksilver, drank deeply.

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