“That I took you in,” she said, “was for a purpose. I did not, as you have seen, bring you here to serve me. And yet, I did take you, raise you, keep you, in peerlessness and in innocence, that you might serve—another. And now you are fit to learn of him and to look upon his image.”
Jaspre’s heart beat quickly, instinctually, and she waited, her eyes fixed only on the curtain. Which, in another instant, the woman drew aside.
Jaspre had never seen a man before. Inside the alcove stood a man. Then, as the lamplight beat on him, she beheld he was made of stone, a pale stone finely planed, fantastically burnished, colored with all the most convincing nuances of life.
His long and thickly curling hair was black, and lay seemingly loosely against his forehead, cheeks and shoulders. His features were chiseled, of a faintly Eastern cast, singularly handsome even to the point of beauty. His flesh was pale, but not with the dead pallor of the stone, rather a curious dark whiteness flushed through with somber tinctures, as if ichors flowed directly under the skin. In the eyes, which most of all might display lifelessness in a statue, there had been set dark jewels that glimmered, that seemed possessed of actual sight.
The image was represented as garbed in a black outer mantle of the ancient Parsua, diagonally cut and fringed with silver, with a broad belt that flashed with large bloody gems. Gems of blood and ink and blue water also crusted the shoes carved on his feet, and stared from his long fingers. One hand lay relaxedly at his side. The left hand was gracefully uplifted in an ambiguous gesture of offering or beckoning.
The statue’s feet rested upon a low plinth, and in the plinth some words had long ago been cut, their letters softened now by time that had, in no other form, impaired the freshness of the work. After a while, as if impelled, Jaspre looked at them and next leaned close.
Deo Arimanio, they read. Nox Invictus.
“The Golden Rope” by Tanith Lee. “Red as Blood,or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer”.
