The Black Throne Read online

  I suppose it comes down to a choice between the pit and the moldy bread, Poe observed.

  In that case, it's dinnertime.

  I rose.

  It's too bad you're not real, Perry, he reflected, almost wistfully. I could still like you.

  His presence being sort of metaphysical I did not have to share, which was good. Shortly after I finished eating I was seized by an uncontrollable fit of yawning. Fearful of being overtaken by slumber too near the central fact of existence in this place, I lay on my side with my back against the wall. I still felt Poe's presence in some diffuse fashion about me.

  When I awoke something was wrong. I'd no idea how long I'd slept, but when I opened my eyes once again there was illumination. A ghastly yellow and red glow permitted me for the first time to see the design of my prison. The place was differently shaped than I'd thought on exploring it in the dark. It was less square than I had deemed it to be and more in the nature of a rectangle—the metal walls at its farther ends, the stone ones at the nearer. Painted upon these I could now discern pictures of fiends, inverted crucifixions, dancing skeletons, people being roasted and torn apart.

  The floor was of stone, the great pit at its center—which I could only discern with great difficulty. My problem in this respect being my position as strapped to some sort of framework. I lay upon my back atop this structure, where I was held in place by what seemed a single long strap. It was twisted about my legs, my torso, my right arm and shoulder. My head and my left arm were free and there was a plate of food on the floor within reach. It was a somewhat spicy beef dish, and after the bread and water I had been given thus far it proved irresistible. I had the feeling I had been drugged the last couple of times I had eaten and drunk here. But what choice did I really have? I was hungry and thirsty. Sleep, for that matter—whatever its source—seemed a superior manner of passing the time in this place.

  I groped then after the water bottle but could not locate it. It was then that I realized it to be the first real physical phase of my torment, for my thirst grew stronger by the moment.

  Poe ... ? I attempted, trying for my former mode of thought.

  Perry, was there ever really an Annie? he seemed to say from somewhere.

  Of course there was. There still is—

  Demon! You lie!

  No! Reach for her. Call to her.

  Then he was gone, leaving me alone again with my thirst. I transferred my attention to the high ceiling, where I saw depicted Saturn devouring his children. In his one hand he held a pendulum, rather than the traditional scythe. After a moment, it seemed to me that this implement was quivering, performing minute movements. Then I was distracted, by a noise near to hand.

  A rat—a beady-eyed little devil—had appeared on the rim of the pit, from which scratching sounds still emerged. He raised his nose and twitched it, whiskers moving in unison. Shortly, another, even larger specimen appeared at his rear. Still, the scratching continued and the first one vanished beneath my rack even as the second sniffed the air. Two more surmounted the rim of the pit as I watched. Then another.

  And another. By then the first one had located the plate which bore the remains of my most recent meal.

  I did not like having the beast so close to me—if for no other reason than some rumors of plague we had encountered on entering Spain—and I flipped my hand in its direction several times in an endeavor to frighten it. But it ignored this entirely and went on quite brazenly disposing of my scraps. A little later, however, the second one arrived and contested its right to the food. Soon they were locked together, biting at each other and uttering unsettling squeals as they tussled beside me. As their conflict continued two more mounted the plate and immediately had at each other.

  I stopped waving my hand after a time, lest it be taken as a threat and attacked. By now the rodents were pouring out of the pit and swarming all about me, some of them even climbing my rack, running across me and using my body as a vantage from which to launch attacks upon their fellows below. I repressed my shudders as best I could, experiencing the while a deathly fear that if one were to take but a single bite of me the rest would suddenly consider me comestible and turn en masse to dining upon me.

  Fortunately, one of them slew another and they fell to contesting its remains. Several more rodenticides then occurred and the floor became a turbulent battleground and dining ground where gray and chittering forms swirled and rolled, rising and falling like some nightmare sea flecked with blood.

  It was a long while before I tore my gaze from this, turning my head and looking upward once again.

  What I saw then caused my breath to catch within my throat. The pendulum no longer quivered but swept now from side to side covering a span of perhaps a yard. And it had descended. Its nether extremity glinted in the light in such a fashion as to indicate an extreme fineness of edge. The blade was perhaps a foot in length, slightly curved and dependant from a brass rod which emerged from Saturn's hand as he munched his offspring with the other and held several others beneath his feet. The entire contraption hissed and created a small breeze with each traversal of its course.

  Now I was unable to remove my eyes from the thing. I counted ten passes before I saw it descend slightly. But another ten failed to see it lowered again. Several more, however, and it jerked downward again. I tried to visualize exactly where it would strike me should it continue inexorably on its course. It seemed targeted upon my heart. I wondered suddenly whether Ligeia knew what was happening to me.

  As with the spectral presence of Poe earlier, I tried communing with her.

  Ligeia? Are you there? Can you hear me? Do you know where I am, and what is happening to me?

  Nothing. Could it be that my focus upon the blade was too distracting of full concentration? Had the drugs dulled my mentality? Had she tried to exploit whatever bond she had created while I was unconscious, and given me up for dead?

  Poe? Are you still about? I tried.

  Horrors! he seemed to cry. The abyss looks back at one!

  It was given you to fill as you would, I offered, expressing a sudden flash of insight. You are an artist.

  Your imagination is the equal of its vacancy.

  Horrors! He repeated.

  Where are you, Poe? Where are you?

  His presence faded again. The pendulum jerked perceptibly downward, its arc lengthening slightly.

  I forgot Poe then, and Ligeia. I even forgot the rats, so intently did my awareness seize upon the hissing edge which cleft the air above me. After a time—hours? days? I know not—I forgot even myself, becoming one with that glittering sweep of doom. I experienced a great calm, oceanic sensation during this period, an enormous sense of drifting peace.

  At some point I lost consciousness.

  Again, what space of time may have transpired, I do not know. I awoke to a dreadful, burning thirst. The rats went to and fro, squeaking of things below. Instantly, upon opening them, my eyes were caught again by the pendulum. It had descended considerably, its arc now traversing perhaps thirty feet, its singing, swishing note now an agonizing thing that cut the mind as it went, in anticipation of corporal contact.

  It might be best to go unconscious again, I reflected, letting it write quietus with a single, cardiac stroke as I lay a-swooning. But now that I desired it, oblivion kept its distance. Alertness was all—alertness and anticipation.

  Left, right ... swish! From somewhere there came maniacal laughter, which I only gradually realized to be my own. I bit my lip until I tasted blood, and I closed my eyes. I opened them immediately, discovering it to be worse that way—not knowing where the blade was. But now my head seemed clearer and I forced myself to think.

  I studied the pendulum rationally rather than permitting myself to be hypnotized by it. I counted my heartbeats between downward jogs of that blade. Since I was at rest during this time my emotions remained relatively constant I assumed a uniformity to their progress... .

  310 ... jog.

&nb
sp; 286 ... jog.

  127 ... jog.

  416 ... jog.

  There was no pattern that I could detect. This was more interesting than any clock-like precision might have been. It told me that what I dealt with at the other end of the pendulum was a human operator rather than any mechanical device. I felt then my first small touch of hope. While the ironclad laws of mechanics might not be gainsaid there was a special order of predictability when it came to areas of existence ruled by human perversity.

  I considered again the matter of my confinement. The strap which held me was in the nature of a surcingle—a single length of heavy material passed round and round me, many times. One slash through it—anywhere—by the destroying crescent and my entire wrapping would be loosened. A person capable of precision observation from a position such as mine—as well as a good head for calculation—might come up with an approximation of where its closest slash would fall before actual contact and whether to inhale or exhale. But I knew there was a human up there somewhere who delighted in inflicting pain. He was going to make this part last as long as he could.

  It was no accident a surcingle held me either, I suddenly realized. Unless I did myself in by gasping at the wrong moment, the pendulum would sever my bond after the operator had had his fun. There would be time enough to roll from the rack to the floor. Such a roll could carry me right into the pit unless I were very careful. Somehow, I felt, what they really wanted was for me to choose the pit, to plunge into it of my own volition and perish below. All the rest was cake decoration.

  So I kept my breathing slow and even and I waited.

  Eight more passes of the pendulum and it was within inches of my breast. The next time by it had descended slightly. Four more, and it grazed my body as it went by. Now would come the toying with me, I guessed. It would remain at the same height or be raised slightly.

  So I drew in a deep breath, gritted my teeth, and closed my eyes. There came a stinging sensation in my chest, and I flexed my arms, kicked with my legs, and rolled to the right. I was off of the rack then, falling... .

  Dark bodies scurried, fleeing in all directions. The hissing sound ceased. I turned my head just in time to behold that damnable machine being drawn back upward into the ceiling. I massaged my aching limbs, attempting to remain alert to any new dangers.

  It was only then that I realized the source of the hellish light which pervaded the place. It was leaking into the cell along the bottoms of the two metal walls—these being the one to my right (across the pit)

  and the one to my left. I could not make anything out through those slits, but even as I tried a suffocating odor entered my cell. It was in the nature of heated iron, and with it the ghastly pictures took on a certain fresh and wild character before their colors, in places, began to run. The walls jolted inward, taking on a richer hue of red than that simple depiction of flame and blood. They began—faintly, at first—to glow.

  They moved again, they brightened again. I smelled smoke and heard clanging and clashing sounds from without. I rose to my feet, kicking off the remainder of the surcingle. I retreated a pace from the advancing wall of heat. It would seem their greatest aim was still to force me to choose the pit.

  The walls moved again. I retreated yet another step. I moved along the pit's edge until I came to a stone wall—the one which held the door. It seemed the most logical place of retreat in the room.

  And then, slowly, I turned. The pit bad been calling to me, steadily, ever since I had discovered it. Now I felt compelled at least to gaze into it, to discover what it was that offered me such terror, such spiritual destruction. I cast my vision downward. The glare from the advancing walls shed further illumination now, and I forced myself to stare at the figures in the terrible tableau beneath my feet.

  The short sidewhiskered man stood beside an open coffin. He wore formal evening attire and also had on black gloves and held in his hand a small whip of the sort I had seen used in animal acts. Somehow, I knew this man to be Rufus Griswold. Before him—head hanging, hands tied—stood Poe. Griswold gestured with the whip, indicating that Poe should enter the coffin. Poe straightened and raised his head, and then he became but an outline, a blackness through which stars shone and comets blazed; the wondrous majesty of the Milky Way scaling the heights of infinity stood now before the casket, and Griswold looked away and gnashed his teeth.

  Then the whip cracked and the figure was Poe once again, and the walls advanced upon me but the greater part of horror lay below, where Griswold wished to destroy imagination, wonder, and the dark unknowns of the human spirit, placing them in a box, burying them in this pit forever.

  The walls moved again. I was dripping with perspiration in the near-unbearable heat. The clanging continued, the smell of smoke was overpowering. I felt that I was about to pass out, and I pressed back against the stone wall.

  "No!" I cried. "Don't do it, Poe! Damn you, Griswold!"

  But neither seemed to hear me. I tottered upon the brink. From somewhere I heard voices. There came a crashing at the door beside me. A hairy hand seized hold of my shoulder. I fell swooning.

  Any horror but this, I remember thinking.

  * * *

  When I awoke I lay in a cell. There was no pit in its center and its door stood ajar. Ligeia and Emerson were with me. Peters stood at the door.

  "General Lasalle has taken the city?" I said, repeating what I thought I had just heard.

  "That is correct," she answered.

  "The bond you established... . It worked?"

  She nodded.

  "But everything that happened to me here—there's a dreamlike, drugged quality to it."

  "Griswold has finally succeeded in using your Annie as a weapon against you," she told me. "He wanted her to destroy you, but she resisted Templeton's orders at the end."

  "So our paths did cross here, in a way. In a place of illusions. What of Von Kempelen?"

  "It was a ruse. Now that Annie is out of the picture, Valdemar can see again. Von Kempelen actually fled to the Duchy of Aragon."

  "So we must backtrack."

  "So it would seem."

  I accompanied them out into the fallen city, heading north to where our coach would be waiting, drinking water as I went.

  Thus do I refute Berkeley.

  * * *

  She was the single artificer of the world in which she sang. Builded of no mortal sand, and sea the salt of her words, she passed through her kingdom, itself become the self of her song. At his cave she called forth the poet, unbound his hands, embraced him.

  "They would have me pluck my dark bird," she said, "of the midnight flights."

  Poe looked past her, at the turbulent sea. A cloud covered the sun.

  "Untrammeled be, and know I would not harm you," she told him.

  "Unreal," he said, and he turned away from her.

  The space before him shattered like a wall of glass.

  "Don't go," she said softly.

  "Unreal."

  He stepped through the crack in the kingdom, into darkness.

  VII

  After the pneumonia had had its way with Elizabeth Poe and her head lay still upon the soiled pillow, long black hair framing her childish face, great, gray eyes finally closed, the tiny actress was dressed in her tawdry finery, the best of her paste jewels hung upon her.

  They laid her to state in the milliner's attic, where the other members of Mr. Placide's company, along with Mrs. Phillips, Mrs. Allan, Mrs. Mackenzie, and their husbands—who had taken upon themselves the arrangements for the funeral—might come by and pay their respects.

  Her resting place was to be close to the wall in St. John's Churchyard. There had been some protest from members of the vestry that an actress should be buried in consecrated ground, but Mr. Allan and Mr.

  Mackenzie, both members of the congregation, had prevailed. As it was, her grave was to remain unmarked for over a century.

  And the gray-eyed boy who had been a pet of the company wonde
red... . How often had he seen his mother die and lie there like this, till it was time to come forward and take her bows? It was taking longer than usual this time. When would she come back to hold him?

  It was a brisk December day in 1811. He was almost three years old. As Mrs. Allan's hired hack bore him away, along the cobbled streets of Richmond, he became aware at some point that his baby sister Rosalie was gone, also.

  He was taken to the three-story Georgian brick house at the corner of Fourteenth Street and Tobacco Alley which was now to be his home. She did not come back for him. It was taking very long.

  * * *

  We came after considerable travel to the quiet duchy of Aragon. No signs of war here, as back in Spain proper. Some of Prospero's subjects spoke French, others Spanish, and still others English. The peace here was of a deathlike sort. If there had been foreign armies in this land recently, they had fled months ago. This domain was devastated not by war, but by disease. Traveling, we first heard rumors and then saw terrible evidence—funeral processions, chanting monks, deserted villages—of the presence of the Red Death, a variant of pneumonic plague.

  We had entered a new year while working our way around a war zone. Valdemar, again, was invaluable in this respect. Another matter on which he'd advised us concerned Prince Prospero and his present situation. The prince had apparently removed himself from all human commerce only a few days before our arrival. Nor was it a simple sequestration. Rather, careless of what happened to the majority of his people, he had called to his side a thousand friends and companions. Determined to escape the Red Death, they—with a suitable staff of servants and a company or two of soldiers—had barricaded themselves inside one of his castellated abbeys where, well supplied with all manner of provisions, they expected to wait out the epidemic.

  All of which would be pretty much academic, save that Prospero was apparently one of the men Von Kempelen had approached on the matter so near to everyone's heart. And Von Kempelen had elected to enter the refuge with the prince.