Port of Shadows by Glen Cook
Papa never talked about his past. He never gave up a name. Well, no sorcerer would volunteer a real one, but Papa was content to go by Papa alone.
Kitten looked forward to Papa’s trips. She could relax her vigilance, then. She could poke around in his laboratory. And, most of all, she could look forward to the gifts and treats he always brought home. The best of those were fresh fruits.
Life stayed busy. It seemed only a few eyeblinks and they were performing Laissa’s sixth rejuvenation since their arrival. Kitten realized that she was eighteen, now. Had she remained in Dusk she would likely be married to some creepy old man who would lend even more influence to the Senjak clan. Unless, like her older sisters, she just flat refused, daring her parents to do their worst.
Their worst could be pretty fierce. But Sylith and Ardath were fierce themselves and willing to fight their parents if they considered the fight worthwhile.
But one of them was married already, even so.
Two years. These days she hardly thought about getting away, back to the world that was her own, the world of the old darkness.
That world might have no room for her anymore. That world might have moved on. But now she had skills that would help if she chose to run.
She did not have the skills to save her sister, though, and likely never would.
* * *
“Papa, we’ve been here more than two years.”
“We’re well into our third, yes.” He sounded a little sad, a little despondent, and a lot resigned. “And I just can’t crack the secret.” A tear trailed down his cheek. He was Papa at the very end of the personality spectrum. The almost sane necromancer had not surfaced for almost two years. Kitten hoped that he was gone forever.
Wishful thinking, that, she knew.
The right emotional cues would resurrect him just as the wrong emotional cues could bring on one of Papa’s seizures.
* * *
During those increasingly infrequent times when Bathdek did recall that she was not Papa’s daughter she prepared herself to flee.
She had worked that out before the wooden castle was finished. What she never could get set was how to take Laissa along with any hope of her sister lasting more than a few months.
At the moment Bathdek refused to abandon a sister for whom she had had no love at all before her plunge down the garbage chute.
“I keep hearing you say you almost have it but I don’t believe that you do, Papa. I think you just want to do it so bad that you make yourself think that you’re getting closer.”
“I’m open to suggestions, Kitten. If you see something that I’ve overlooked, tell me.”
“I’m not saying that you overlooked anything, just that there’s something that you don’t know.”
“Which would be what?” Said with a faint hint of sly.
This was hard. She had to give up her most precious secret. If she did they might get Laissa past the final roadblock. And, before long, she might be in good enough shape to run away.
“Papa, I was one of the people who received the Blessing.”
He stared. This was going to be harsh. This was going to blast him out of his comfortable end of the personality spectrum.
Before anything else she had to make him remember that he was not actually her father. She was an uninvited visitor to his old home and he had kidnapped her for her trouble.
He shuddered. He went on staring, without seeing, his internal population beginning to stir. Bathdek feared that he would lapse into a seizure rather than recognize reality, though he had not suffered an episode for more than a year.
Then the serious necromancer broached. “And that explains why you never get any older, and why you looked younger than the age you claimed from the start.”
A silent minute passed. Then Papa came back. “That could be useful, Kitten. If you can recall the process.”
“I remained aware throughout it.” Neither version of Papa showed any interest in who she might have been, to have gained so rare a gift. Nor did either ask why she had hidden this news until now. There was nothing but iron-hard interest in rehearsing exactly what had happened that afternoon, when the Dominator, under the eyes of, and with the assistance of, Bathdek’s mother and father, had spent six hours gifting her with life that would end only when she stumbled into catastrophic misfortune.
Sustained youth went with the Blessing. Physically, she would age less than a year each century.
The hard necromancer kept surfacing, throwing sly looks around.
His agenda might not exactly match Papa’s own.
* * *
Kitten spent a lot of time with Papa the next several days, talking about her Blessing while she let her chores slide. She recalled every detail of the procedure that she could. Her memory was not eidetic but it was quite good. Papa betrayed frequent moments of excitement. He was certain that they were onto something.
He said, “I’m pretty sure I understand what they did and it should be repeatable. I think that we can help Laissa a lot if we copy that and get it right. We can fix it so she won’t need the treatments anymore.”
“That would be good. I’m glad.”
“But there are still some critical details missing. What I want to do, if you will permit me, is…” Papa spent twenty minutes detailing a scheme for putting her under hypnosis to regress her to those formidable hours during which she had become an immortal.
Kitten said nothing about a girl named Dorotea Senjak having received the Blessing that same afternoon, only to run into her catastrophic misadventure just slightly more than a year later.
Not once did it occur to Bathdek to wonder what impact the Blessing might have had on Laissa’s accession to her present condition.
Even after long exposure Bathdek had to overcome considerable stress in order to trust Papa enough to let him put her under.
23
Long Ago and Far Away: New Hope for the Dead
Kitten wakened thirsty and starving and deeply confused. She must have been out a lot longer than the few hours Papa had promised that the regression would take. She felt like it had been days.
She was on her back on a table in Papa’s research hall. She felt hands touching bare skin where no one else should be touching her. Before she could protest Papa moved into view. He carried a big metal bowl and some wet cloths.
So. He had been cleaning her. She had been unconscious long enough to have soiled herself.
She had no sense of having been violated.
She tried to speak.
Papa went from glum to radiant. “Oh, excellent! You’ve finally come around. I was afraid that we had…” He stopped, pulled a sheet over her, faced away. He began humming.
Kitten turned her head. That was hard work.
Papa was cleaning Laissa now. Laissa was on a table four feet away. She was asleep or unconscious. Kitten said, “Papa, I have a really bad headache.”
“I’ll get you something as soon as I’m done with your sister.”
Kitten did not like the way Papa eyed naked Laissa, nor the way he touched her, though he was doing nothing unlawful or immoral. He was just being creepy.
* * *
“I’m almost sure that we were successful, Kitten! We are over the hump! Laissa won’t wake up for a day or two, but I think she will be as good as new.”
Kitten was up and around, now, slowly doing catch-up chores. She had been unconscious for four days. Papa said he had tried to feed her soup and water but had had only limited luck. The same with Laissa. Kitten did better getting water and broth into her sister.
Kitten had awakened with aches and pains all over, and several small wounds on her stomach, none of which Papa explained. Laissa had wounds in the same places. Kitten wanted to be suspicious but, near as she could tell, nothing perverted had been done to either of them. She should be safe, anyway. Laissa was the one who inspired Papa’s imagination.
Kitten asked, “If she’s going to get better do you think she migh
“I doubt it. Definitely nothing from before the fever. I don’t recall most of my life, either, but I still get along, out here with my girls.”
“You’re getting creepy again, Papa.”
* * *
Laissa was slow recovering. She did not reclaim any Dorotea memories. She did retain memories of her life as Laissa. Gradually she became more animated, more personable, more responsive. Best of all, she talked. Not a lot, and always with some difficulty, but she did form full sentences and did demonstrate interest in her world.
She and Kitten became closer, working shoulder-to-shoulder. She followed Kitten around when Papa would not let her stick close to him. She was in the laboratory with Papa for hours every day but sometimes, he said, he could get more done if she was not there, distracting him.
The improvements in Laissa accumulated. Her intelligence increased slowly. By winter’s end she could not only follow simple conversations but could participate. Best of all, she did not need her treatments anymore.
She might not yet be wholly cured of death but she was, increasingly, filled with life.
Papa was thrilled.
Bathdek was thrilled. Summer would see the end of this.
Just a few months to go. Their getaway kits were ready. They could grab them and be gone in half an hour, sometime when Papa went back west. They would get at least a four-day head start. Maybe as much as seven days.
Then Bathdek’s plan came crashing down.
* * *
“Kitten, I need to talk to you.”
Papa was all cool and stern on the surface but she saw real fear behind that. Something bad had happened.
“Of course, Papa. What’s wrong?” It could not be anything that she had done, nor something from outside. He had not been away for more than a month. It could not be Laissa. Laissa was the best that she had been since she stopped being Dorotea. Laissa had made a feeble joke at breakfast, something she had not managed even as Dorotea Senjak.
But it was Laissa. And it was the last thing that Bathdek expected.
Papa said, “Laissa is pregnant.”
“Huh?” A long silence. “What?” More silence, another dumbstruck grunt, then, “No. No way! It isn’t possible!” Still more silence, then, “What did you do, Papa? When did you do it?” Then back to, “It’s impossible! She isn’t even…”
Laissa was dead. Dead girls did not have periods or anything. Dead girls did not have babies.
“Until last week I would’ve agreed, Kitten. But I’ve checked and checked. There just isn’t any doubt.”
Nor any doubt who the father might be. When had he managed? When Laissa was in the lab with him? How had he managed, for the gods’ sakes? What did it take to get a dead girl pregnant?
In a gallows humor moment she told herself she had better make sure she stayed on the far side of the room from him—which might not be far enough if he was potent enough to impregnate a dead girl.
“I need to sit down, Papa. This is a shock.” Beyond the immediate impact loomed the long-term certainty that Laissa would be unable to run away this summer. “How far along is she?”
“About three months.”
It must have happened right after Laissa recovered. But full term would still steal most of the summer. And then they would have an infant to care for. Maybe.
“Papa, I’m really, really mad at you right now.”
“I’m not exactly happy with myself, Kitten. One day I just couldn’t fight it anymore. After that there was no stopping. But … It was stupid, sure, but we can’t undo it. We have to deal with the situation that exists right now.”
Kitten took several careful breaths. Papa was really stressed. If she upbraided him as ferociously as she wanted, now, he might suffer a seizure. The last one had been savage. He had been laid up for days after it ended. The next one might be fatal. Then where would she and Laissa be? “So what do you mean to do about it?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m talking to you. This could have more impact on you than on me or Laissa.”
What? What did he suspect? Wait. He probably just meant that there would be lots more housework. Laissa, however much improved she was, would still be lacking as a mother.
Would this baby even be a living thing? Or human? Or something undead that suckled the teat of the night?
How would it feed? No way would Laissa be making breast milk. But, then, there was no way she should be making a baby, either.
“Papa, I know nothing about babies except that I have to have been one, once upon a time. I’ve never even seen one up close. This is … I don’t know.” This had rattled her more than had the loss of Dorotea or her own capture. “What were you thinking? Never mind. I know what you were thinking. You never hid it very well. But I did think that you had it under control. And I’m babbling. Papa, I can’t help you with the decisions you have to make. I don’t know anything about that kind of stuff.”
She could learn, though, she supposed. She had learned a lot that she never expected to have to before the night her unbeloved sister got dumped down a garbage chute.
In her own world she could have expected to bear a child or two out of duty, but she would have had little to do with the beast after it was delivered, until such time as it stopped smelling bad and was domesticated enough to be presented publicly.
“I don’t know what else to say. I can’t help you. I don’t know how.”
“Thank you for listening. That was kind. It was unfair of me to put any of this onto you.”
“And I just keep on wondering, how could you, Papa?”
* * *
Kitten could not control her thinking. She was becoming obsessed. When had the thing happened? And, how? Why would Laissa…? On reflection, she recalled progressive changes in her sister since her recovery. Changes in addition to the obvious physical and intellectual improvements. Little sister was almost always in a good mood now, was eager to help, and sometimes actually initiated a conversation. That might be at a child’s level but it was markedly better than the Laissa of a year ago.
Might what had happened between Laissa and Papa have contributed to the changes?
Repugnant though Kitten found that idea, she did know that there were schools of sorcery centered on tantric principles. There was power there, power enough to shatter reason in the most reasonable people.
Lately Laissa stuck to Papa like a worshipful puppy. But Kitten had her chances to talk when they were busy with some routine chore.
Laissa had become more useful than she had been before, and was more cheerful in her work.
“Because Papa wanted to,” she said when Kitten asked her why she had let the sorcerer have his way. “And it was warm. I like it when Papa makes me warm.”
The exchange that followed was the longest that Kitten ever had with her sister, and it horrified her. Laissa insisted that she really liked it when Papa made her warm. She chased after Papa all the time because she wanted to get warm again and again.
“Papa said don’t tell Kitten. Kitten might get mad. Laissa was careful so Kitten wouldn’t know. But it was hard sometimes, when Kitten was being nosy and Laissa wanted to get warm so bad…”
Kitten wanted to make a crack about she should sit closer to the fireplace, then. But that was almost petty.
Still, this was awful. This was unbelievable.
A dead girl ought not to have any interest in physical things. A live Senjak daughter ought not to, either, except as a political ploy.
She bowed out of the conversation. Laissa was too willing to describe everything directly and graphically. She owned no shame.
Kitten wondered if Laissa had any idea what it meant to be pregnant.
One thing became clear. Laissa no longer felt like she had to hide her
Papa began barring the door to his laboratory so he could get some work done.
Kitten went on, eyes cast down, unable to believe life’s latest repulsive twist.
* * *
Laissa was in her seventh month. She was carrying a baby, there was no doubt, and it was getting active. Laissa even looked more pregnant than she was. And she was happy.
She was now more bright and cheerful than Dorotea ever was before she died, though she did mope frequently because Papa did not want to get warm as often as she did.
Kitten remained appalled. And did not know exactly why. In Dusk girls much younger than Laissa were given as gifts to men older than Papa all the time.
She and Laissa were outside, feeding the animals. Those numbered in the dozens, now. Papa brought some back every time he went traveling. Laissa said, “You’re thinking about running away, aren’t you?”
Kitten did not deny it.
Laissa said, “Go ahead and go if you want. I won’t warn Papa. But I’m not going to go with you.”
Kitten was not surprised. “We can take care of the baby.”
“I don’t want to go, Kitten! I don’t. I won’t! I want to be with Papa!”
What could you do?
You heard about these situations almost before you were old enough to understand them. Bizarre relationships, not uncommon in the Domination, often flaunted by those involved in them. But Senjaks did not …
Bathdek sucked it up, crushed it, and put it in its grave. She reminded herself that this was not actual incest, the most common Domination perversion. This was necrophilia, and that was not common at all.
For half a second she managed to make a joke out of it. It was consensual necrophilia, and the deceased participant was more enthusiastic about it than the live participant was.
24
In Modern Times: Lost Treasure Rediscovered
Two Dead and Tides Elba completed their first round trip in six days. The two oldest Honnoh girls came back with them. Both had been reeducated as huntresses meant to winkle out their feral sisters. Though the strongest captives had left the compound, the mind field remained potent. The Taken still turned pale and got shaky inside it. I wondered how folks out west would manage once the girls began to clutter up the Tower.