Lady of the Skulls

Patricia A. McKillip

Like Ursula K. Le Guin and Tanith Lee, Patricia McKillip (b. 1948) was one of those authors who emerged in the wake of the Tolkien fantasy explosion and became popular, at least initially, for books written for a teenage market. With McKillip it wasThe Throne of the Erril of Sherill(1973) followed by the wonderfully imaginative The Forgotten Beasts of Eld(1976), which won the very first World Fantasy Award. Since then McKillip has produced the Morgan of Hed trilogy, starting with The Riddle-Master of Hed(1976) — a series redolent of Tolkien and Le Guin — and the continuing Cygnet series, which began with The Sorceress and the Cygnet(1991). The following is one of McKillip’s rare short stories .

THE LADY SAW THEM RIDE ACROSS THE PLAIN:a company of six.

Putting down her watering can, which was the bronze helm of some unfortunate knight, she leaned over the parapet, chin on her hand. They were all armed, their war-horses caparisoned; they glittered under the noon sun with silver-edged shields, jewelled bridles and sword hilts. What, she wondered as always in simple astonishment, did they imagine they had come to fight? She picked up the helm, poured water into a skull containing a miniature rose bush. The water came from within the tower, the only source on the entire barren, sun-cracked plain. The knights would ride around the tower under the hot sun for hours, looking for entry. At sunset, she would greet them, carrying water.

She sighed noiselessly, trowelling around the little rose bush with a dragon’s claw. If they were too blind to find the tower door, why did they think they could see clearly within it? They, she thought in sudden impatience. They, they, they… they fed the plain with their bleached bones; they never learned…

A carrion-bird circled above her, counting heads. She scowled at it; it cried back at her, mocking.You, its black eye said,never die. But you bring the dead to me .

“They never listen to me,” she said, looking over the plain again, her eyes prickling dryly. In the distance, lightning cracked apart the sky; purple clouds rumbled. But there was no rain in them, never any rain; the sky was as tearless as she. She moved from skull to skull along the parapet wall, watering things she had grown stubbornly from seeds that blew from distant, placid gardens in peaceful kingdoms. Some were grasses, weeds, or wildflowers. She did not care; she watered anything that grew.

The men below began their circling. Their mounts kicked up dust, snorting; she heard cursing, bewildered questions, then silence as they paused to rest. Sometimes they called her, pleading. But she could do nothing for them. They churned around the tower, bright, powerful, richly armed. She read the devices on their shields: three of Grenelief, one of Stoney Head, one of Dulcis Isle, one of Carnelaine. After a time, one man dropped out of the circle, stood back. His shield was simple: a red rose on white. Carnelaine, she thought, looking down at him, and then realized he was looking up at her.

He would see a puff of airy sleeve, a red geranium in an upside-down skull. Lady of the Skulls, they called her, clamouring to enter. Sometimes they were more courteous, sometimes less. She watered, waiting for this one to call her. He did not; he guided his horse into the tower’s shadow and dismounted. He took his helm off, sat down to wait, burrowing idly in the ground and flicking stones as he watched her sleeve sometimes, and sometimes the distant storm.

Drawn to his calm, the others joined him finally, flinging off pieces of armour. They cursed the hard ground and sat, their voices drifting up to her in the windless air as she continued her watering.

Like others before them, they spoke of what the most precious thing of the legendary treasure might be, besides elusive. They had made a pact, she gathered: if one obtained the treasure, he would divide it among those left living. She raised a brow.

The one of Dulcis Isle, a dark-haired man wearing red jewels in his ears, said, “Anything of the dragon for me. They say it was a dragon’s hoard, once. They say that dragon bones are worm-holed with magic, and if you move one bone the rest will follow. The bones will bring the treasure with them.”

“I heard,” said the man from Stoney Head, “there is a well and a fountain rising from it, and when the drops of the fountain touch ground they turn to diamonds.”

“Don’t talk of water,” one of the three thick-necked, nut-haired men of Grenelief pleaded. “I drank all mine.”

“All we must do is find the door. There’s water within.”

“What are you going to do?” the man of Carnelaine asked. “Hoist the water on your shoulder and carry it out?”

The straw-haired man from Stoney Head tugged at his long moustaches. He had a plain, blunt, energetic voice devoid of any humour. “I’ll carry it out in my mouth. When I come back alive for the rest of it, there’ll be plenty to carry it in. Skulls, if nothing else. I heard there’s a sorceress’s cauldron, looks like a rusty old pot—”

“May be that,” another of Grenelief said.

“May be, but I’m going for the water. What else could be most precious in this heat-blasted place?”

“That’s a point,” the man of Dulcis Isle said. Then: “But no, it’s dragon bone for me.”

“More to the point,” the third of Grenelief said, aggrieved, “how do we get in the cursed place?”

“There’s a lady up there watering plants,” the man of Carnelaine said, and there were all their faces staring upwards, she could have tossed jewels into their open mouths. “She knows we’re here.”

“It’s the Lady,” they murmured, hushed.

“Lady of the Skulls.”

“Does she have hair? I wonder.”

“She’s old as the tower. She must be a skull.”

“She’s beautiful,” the man of Stoney Head said shortly. “They always are, the ones who lure, the ones who guard, the ones who give death.”

“Is it her tower?” the one of Carnelaine asked. “Or is she trapped?”

“What’s the difference? When the spell is gone, so will she be. She’s nothing real, just a piece of the tower’s magic.”

They shifted themselves as the tower shadow shifted. The Lady took a sip of water out of the helm, then dipped her hand in it and ran it over her face. She wanted to lean over the edge and shout at them all: Go home, you silly, brainless fools. If you know so much, what are you doing here sitting on bare ground in front of a tower without a door waiting for a woman to kill you? They moved to one side of the tower, she to the other, as the sun climbed down the sky. She watched the sun set. Still the men refused to leave, though they had not a stick of wood to burn against the dark. She sighed her noiseless sigh and went down to greet them.

The fountain sparkled in the midst of a treasure she had long ceased to notice. She stepped around gold armour, black, gold-rimed dragon bones, the white bones of princes. She took the plain silver goblet beside the rim of the well, and dipped it into the water, feeling the cooling mist from the little fountain. The man of Dulcis Isle was right about the dragon bones. The doorway was the dragon’s open yawning maw, and it was invisible by day.

The last ray of sunlight touched the bone, limned a black, toothed opening that welcomed the men. Mute, they entered, and she spoke.

“You may drink the water, you may wander throughout the tower. If you make no choice, you may leave freely. Having left, you may never return. If you choose, you must make your choice by sunset tomorrow. If you choose the most precious thing in the tower, you may keep all that you see. If you choose wrongly, you will die before you leave the plain.”

Their mouths were open again, their eyes stunned at what hung like vines from the old dragon’s bones, what lay heaped upon the floor. Flicking, flicking, their eyes came across her finally, as she stood patiently holding the cup. Their eyes stopped at her: a tall, broad-shouldered, barefoot woman in a coarse white linen smock, her red hair bundled untidily on top of her head, her long skirt still splashed with the wine she had spilled in the tavern so long ago. In the torchlight it looked like blood.

They chose to sleep, as they always did, tired by the long journey, dazed by too much rich, vague colour in the shadows. She sat on the steps and watched them for a little. One cried in his sleep. She went to the top of the tower after a while, where she could watch the stars. Under the moon, the flowers turned odd, secret colours, as if their true colours blossomed in another land’s daylight, and they had left their pale shadows behind by night. She fell asleep naming the moon’s colours.

In the morning, she went down to see who had had sense enough to leave.

They were all still there, searching, picking, discarding among the treasures on the floor, scattered along the spiralling stairs. Shafts of light from the narrow windows sparked fiery colours that constantly caught their eyes, made them drop what they had, reach out again. Seeing her, the one from Dulcis Isle said, trembling, his eyes stuffed with riches, “May we ask questions? What is this?”

“Don’t ask her, Marlebane,” the one from Stoney Head said brusquely. “She’ll lie. They all do.”

She stared at him. “I will only lie to you,” she promised. She took the small treasure from the hand of the man from Dulcis Isle. “This is an acorn made of gold. If you swallow it, you will speak all the languages of humans and animals.”

“And this?” one of Grenelief said eagerly, pushing next to her, holding something of silver and smoke.

“That is a bracelet made of a dragon’s nostril bone. The jewel in it is its petrified eye. It watches for danger when you wear it.”

The man of Carnelaine was playing a flute made from a wizard’s thigh bone. His eyes, the odd grey-green of the dragon’s eye, looked dream-drugged with the music. The man of Stoney Head shook him roughly.

“Is that your choice, Ran?”

“No.” He lowered the flute, smiling. “No, Corbeil.”

“Then drop it before it seizes hold of you and you choose it. Have you seen yet what you might take?”

“No. Have you changed your mind?”

“No.” He looked at the fountain, but, prudent, did not speak.

“Bram, look at this,” said one brother of Grenelief to another. “Look!”

“I am looking, Yew.”

“Look at it! Look at it, Ustor! Have you ever seen such a thing? Feel it! And watch: it vanishes, in light.”

He held a sword; its hilt was solid emerald, its blade like water falling in clear light over stone. The Lady left them, went back up the stairs, her bare feet sending gold coins and jewels spinning down through the cross-hatched shafts of light. She stared at the place on the horizon where the flat dusty gold of the plain met the parched dusty sky. Go, she thought dully. Leave all this and go back to the places where things grow. Go, she willed them, go go, go, with the beat of her heart’s blood. But no one came out the door beneath her. Someone, instead, came up the stairs.

“I have a question,” said Ran of Carnelaine.

“Ask.”

“What is your name?”

She had all but forgotten; it came to her again, after a beat of surprise. “Amaranth.” He was holding a black rose in one hand, a silver lily in the other. If he chose one, the thorns would kill him; the other, flashing its pure light, would sear through his eyes into his brain.

“Amaranth. Another flower.”

“So it is,” she said indifferently. He laid the magic flowers on the parapet, picked a dying geranium leaf, smelled the miniature rose. “It has no smell,” she said. He picked another dead leaf. He seemed always on the verge of smiling; it made him look sometimes wise and sometimes foolish. He drank out of the bronze watering helm; it was the colour of his hair.

“This water is too cool and sweet to come out of such a barren plain,” he commented. He seated himself on the wall, watching her. “Corbeil says you are not real. You look real enough to me.” She was silent, picking dead clover out of the clover pot. “Tell me where you came from.”

She shrugged. “A tavern.”

“And how did you come here?”

She gazed at him. “How did you come here, Ran of Carnelaine?”

He did smile then, wryly. “Carnelaine is poor; I came to replenish its coffers.”

“There must be less chancy ways.”

“Maybe I wanted to see the most precious thing there is to be found. Will the plain bloom again, if it is found? Will you have a garden instead of skull-pots?”

“Maybe,” she said levelly. “Or maybe I will disappear. Die when the magic dies. If you choose wisely, you’ll have answers to your questions.”

He shrugged. “Maybe I will not choose. There are too many precious things.”

She glanced at him. He was trifling, wanting hints from her, answers couched in riddles. Shall I take rose or lily? Or wizard’s thigh bone? Tell me. Sword or water or dragon’s eye? Some had questioned her so before.

She said simply, “I cannot tell you what to take. I do not know myself. As far as I have seen, everything kills.” It was as close as she could come, as plain as she could make it: leave.

But he said only, his smile gone, “Is that why you never left?” She stared at him again. “Walked out the door, crossed the plain on some dead king’s horse and left?”

She said, “I cannot.” She moved away from him, tending some wildflower she called wind-bells, for she imagined their music as the night air tumbled down from the mountains to race across the plain. After a while, she heard his steps again, going down.

A voice summoned her: “Lady of the Skulls!” It was the man of Stoney Head. She went down, blinking in the thick, dusty light. He stood stiffly, his face hard. They all stood still, watching.

“I will leave now,” he said. “I may take anything?”

“Anything,” she said, making her heart stone against him, a ghost’s heart, so that she would not pity him. He went to the fountain, took a mouthful of water. He looked at her, and she moved to show him the hidden lines of the dragon’s mouth. He vanished through the stones.

They heard him scream a moment later. The three of Grenelief stared towards the sound. They each wore pieces of a suit of armour that made the wearer invisible: one lacked an arm, another a thigh, the other his hands. Subtly their expressions changed, from shock and terror into something more complex. Five, she saw them thinking. Only five ways to divide it now.

“Anyone else?” she asked coldly. The man of Dulcis Isle slumped down on to the stairs, swallowing. He stared at her, his face gold-green in the light. He swallowed again. Then he shouted at her.

She had heard every name they could think of to shout before she had ever come to the tower. She walked up the stairs past him; he did not have the courage to touch her. She went to stand among her plants. Corbeil of Stoney Head lay where he had fallen, a little brown patch of wet earth beside his open mouth. As she looked, the sun dried it, and the first of the carrion-birds landed.

She threw bones at the bird, cursing, though it looked unlikely that anyone would be left to take his body back. She hit the bird a couple of times, then another came. Then someone took the bone out of her hand, drew her back from the wall.

“He’s dead,” Ran said simply. “It doesn’t matter to him whether you throw bones at the birds or at him.”

“I have to watch,” she said shortly. She added, her eyes on the jagged line the parapet made against the sky, like blunt worn dragon’s teeth, “You keep coming, and dying. Why do you all keep coming? Is treasure worth being breakfast for the carrion crows?”

“It’s worth many different things. To the brothers of Grenelief it means adventure, challenge, adulation if they succeed. To Corbeil it was something to be won, something he would have that no one else could get. He would have sat on top of the pile, and let men look up to him, hating and envying.”

“He was a cold man. Cold men feed on a cold fire. Still,” she added, sighing, “I would have preferred to see him leave on his feet. What does the treasure mean to you?”

“Money.” He smiled his vague smile. “It’s not in me to lose my life over money. I’d sooner walk empty-handed out the door. But there’s something else.”

“What?”

“The riddle itself. That draws us all, at heart. What is the most precious thing? To see it, to hold it, above all to recognize it and choose it - that’s what keeps us coming and traps you here.” She stared at him, saw, in his eyes, the wonder that he felt might be worth his life.

She turned away; her back to him, she watered bleeding heart and columbine, stonily ignoring what the crows were doing below. “If you find the thing itself,” she asked dryly, “what will you have left to wonder about?”

“There’s always life.”

“Not if you are killed by wonder.”

He laughed softly, an unexpected sound, she thought, in that place. “Wouldn’t you ride across the plain, if you heard tales of this tower, to try to find the most precious thing in it?”

“Nothing’s precious to me,” she said, heaving a cauldron of dandelions into shadow. “Not down there, anyway. If I took one thing away with me, it would not be sword or gold or dragon bone. It would be whatever is alive.”

He touched the tiny rose. “You mean, like this? Corbeil would never have died for this.”

“He died for a mouthful of water.”

“He thought it was a mouthful of jewels.” He sat beside the rose, his back to the air, watching her pull pots into shade against the noon light. “Which makes him twice a fool, I suppose. Three times a fool: for being wrong, for being deluded, and for dying. What a terrible place this is. It strips you of all delusions and then it strips your bones.”

“It is terrible,” she said sombrely. “Yet those who leave without choosing never seem to get the story straight. They must always talk of the treasure they didn’t take, not of the bones they didn’t leave.”

“It’s true. Always, they take wonder with them out of this tower and they pass it on to every passing fool.” He was silent a little, still watching her. “Amaranth,” he said slowly. “That’s the flower in poetry that never dies. It’s apt.”

“Yes.”

“And there is another kind of Amaranth, that’s fiery and beautiful and it dies…” Her hands stilled, her eyes widened, but she did not speak. He leaned against the hot, crumbling stones, his dragon’s eyes following her like a sunflower following the sun. “What were you,” he asked, “when you were the Amaranth that could die?”

“I was one of those faceless women who brought you wine in a tavern. Those you shout at, and jest about, and maybe give a coin to and maybe not, depending how we smile.”

He was silent, so silent she thought he had gone, but when she turned, he was still there; only his smile had gone. “Then I’ve seen you,” he said softly, “many times, in many places. But never in a place like this.”

“The man from Stoney Head expected someone else, too.”

“He expected a dream.”

“He saw what he expected: Lady of the Skulls.” She pulled wild mint into a shady spot under some worn tapestry. “And so he found her. That’s all I am now. You were better off when all I served was wine.”

“You didn’t build this tower.”

“How do you know? Maybe I got tired of the laughter and the coins and I made a place for myself where I could offer coins and give nothing.”

“Who built this tower?”

She was silent, crumbling a mint leaf between her fingers. “I did,” she said at last. “The Amaranth who never dies.”

“Did you?” He was oddly pale; his eyes glittered in the light as if at the shadow of danger. “You grow roses out of thin air in this blistered plain; you try to beat back death for us with our own bones. You curse our stupidity and our fate, not us. Who built this tower for you?” She turned her face away, mute. He said softly, “The other Amaranth, the one that dies, is also called Love-lies-bleeding.”

“It was the last man,” she said abruptly, her voice husky, shaken with sudden pain, “who offered me a coin for love. I was so tired of being touched and then forgotten, of hearing my name spoken and then not, as if I were only real when I was looked at, and just something to forget after that, like you never remember the flowers you toss away. So I said to him: no, and no, and no. And then I saw his eyes. They were like amber with thorns of dark in them: sorcerer’s eyes. He said, ‘Tell me your name.’ And I said, ‘Amaranth,’ and he laughed and laughed and I could only stand there, with the wine I had brought him overturned on my tray, spilling down my skirt. He said, ‘Then you shall make a tower of your name, for the tower is already built in your heart.’”

“Love-lies-bleeding,” he whispered.

“He recognized that Amaranth.”

“Of course he did. It was what died in his own heart.”

She turned then, wordless, to look at him. He was smiling again, though his face was still blanched under the hard, pounding light, and the sweat shone in his hair. She said, “How do you know him?”

“Because I have seen this tower before and I have seen in it the woman we all expected, the only woman some men ever know… And every time we come expecting her, the woman who lures us with what’s most precious to us and kills us with it, we build the tower around her again and again and again…”

She gazed at him. A tear slid down her cheek, and then another. “I thought it was my tower,” she whispered. “The Amaranth that never dies but only lives for ever to watch men die.”

“It’s all of us,” he sighed. In the distance, thunder rumbled. “We all build towers, then dare each other to enter…” He picked up the little rose in its skull pot and stood abruptly; she followed him to the stairs.

“Where are you going with my rose?”

“Out.”

She followed him down, protesting. “But it’s mine!”

“You said we could choose anything.”

“It’s just a worthless thing I grew, it’s nothing of the tower’s treasure. If you must take after all, choose something worth your life!”

He glanced back at her, as they rounded the tower stairs to the bottom. His face was bone-white, but he could still smile. “I will give you back your rose,” he said, “if you will let me take the Amaranth.”

“But I am the only Amaranth.”

He strode past his startled companions, whose hands were heaped withthis, no this , andmaybe this . As if the dragon’s magical eye had opened in his own eye, he led her himself into the dragon’s mouth.

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